Gianni Infantino’s private jet has already touched down in at least ten host cities during the opening week of the 2026 World Cup, enabling the FIFA president to attend matches from Mexico City to Vancouver. French carbon consultancy Greenly calculates that his aircraft alone could emit between 300 and 500 tonnes of CO2 over the tournament if he continues to move between multiple cities each day – roughly the annual footprint of 35 to 55 French citizens. The assessment follows earlier reporting that Infantino clocked 600,000 km on the same Qatar Airways jet in the three years preceding the event.\n\nThe emissions are embedded in the structure of the first 48-team, tri-nation World Cup. Staging 104 matches across 16 NFL venues dispersed from Houston to Seattle has created what Swiss geographer David Gogishvili of the University of Lausanne terms a “sustainability paradox”. By reusing existing but geographically scattered stadiums, FIFA has built a model “structurally dependent on high-emission air travel”; leadership commuting by private jet “perfectly reflects the broader systemic issue”, he told AFP. The arrangement normalises hyper-mobility, he argues, while shifting transport costs and carbon burdens onto host regions and fans.\n\nFIFA defends the travel choices as the “most efficient and cost-effective” option for its executives, noting that the organisation covers all costs. Yet criticism extends beyond one official’s schedule. Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director John Hocevar notes that daily private-jet flights by executives do not signal that FIFA acknowledges its climate responsibilities. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar attracted 1,846 private jets – more than the Super Bowl, Cannes, Davos and COP28 combined – underscoring that luxury emissions from ultra-wealthy attendees, not only federation leaders, are baked into the event’s footprint.\n\nThe pattern will recur. Next year’s Women’s World Cup in Brazil, chosen over a fully rail-accessible Benelux-German bid, will again compel long-distance air travel. The 2030 men’s centenary tournament, split across Morocco, Portugal, Spain and South America with a possible expansion to 64 teams, threatens steeper carbon costs. How FIFA addresses these tensions in its hosting models will be tested when the 2030 format is finalised.