Why FIFA’s “Peace Prize” to Trump Matters
- Espen Kjønø
- Dec 21, 2025
- 3 min read
On December 6th in Washington D.C during the official draw for the 2026 World Cup, FIFA awarded U.S. President Donald J. Trump with the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World”. An award that was given to Trump without any transparency in regards to a list of nominees, the judges or the criteria. The decision landed less like a sporting honour and more like a diplomatic signal. In a world where football has become one of the most effective instruments of soft power, such gestures are rarely symbolic on their own. Football now sits firmly inside the architecture of global geopolitics. Mega-events, trade flows, infrastructure investment, and diplomatic relations are significant factors for the most popular sport in the world. For an organization that regularly proclaims football as a universal language of unity, the decision was bound to provoke strong reactions.
Donald Trump is a polarizing figure. His presidency has been defined by sharp rhetoric, transactional diplomacy, and policies that many critics argue deepen global as well as domestic divisions. Supporters of President Trump, however, point to moments of unconventional diplomacy and claim results where traditional approaches stalled. By associating a “peace” label with Trump, FIFA has stepped directly into this contested political terrain, and many critics are now accusing both FIFA and the Trump administration of sportswashing.
Sportswashing
The term sportswashing is a relatively new term. The coining of the term sportswashing can be credited to journalist and human rights activist, Gulnara Akhundova. Akhundova wrote an article where she criticised the fact that the 2015 European Games were being held in Baku in Azerbaijan, a country highly criticized for their human rights records.
Sportswashing is often framed as something that “others” do: Gulf States, authoritarian regimes, emerging powers who are seeking legitimacy. Yet, FIFA’s decision to award the “FIFA Peace Prize” to Trump highlights how established powers also use sports to launder narratives, benefit from reinforcing an image of leadership, and the deploy moral relevance at a time of global fragmentation.
American foreign policy has long relied on soft power: culture, media and sport are among its most effective tools. The growing popularity of football in the U.S., combined with FIFA’s expanding commercial ties to the American market ahead of the 2026 World Cup, makes the symbolism of such awards particularly poignant.
For FIFA, the risk is reputational but calculated. The organization has survived corruption scandals, governance crises, and political backlash by aligning itself with whoever holds power. Its strategy is that of adaptability, not principle.
Critics have long argued that governments have used popular sporting events such as the World Cup and organizations like FIFA as instruments to sportswash their human rights record. However, these same critics now claim that by awarding the “FIFA Peace Prize” to Donald Trump, FIFA has now shifted to doing the sportswashing themselves.
The broader implication is unsettling, when the biggest football association in the world rewards political leaders seemingly without clear benchmarks, they normalize a transactional model of global governance. Influence exchanged for legitimacy, and access for praise. However, the mass appeal of football means that decisions such as FIFA awarding President Trump with the “FIFA Peace Prize” are visible and contested. Fans, journalists and civil society have increasingly recognized the patterns at play in instances like this one but also challenges the idea that sports exist above politics. FIFA has long claimed to be politically neutral. There is a history of fining players for displaying political slogans or gestures on the field during qualifications to the World Cup or during the finals. And yet this same organisation is now endorsing a sitting president of the United States through a symbolic gesture.
The decision to give this award to Donald Trump, regardless of one’s political position, illustrates the tension at the heart of modern football governance. FIFA wants to speak the language of peace while operating in a world defined by money, influence and geopolitics. In an era of multipolar tension and declining trust in institutions, the question is not whether football will be political. It already is. The real question is who controls its narratives, and to what ends.
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