Playing Defense: CBRN Preparedness for the 2026 FIFA World Cup

Executive Summary

As North America prepares to host the largest FIFA World Cup in history, security and preparedness are coming into sharper focus. All three host nations have taken concrete measures to protect the safety and security of players, VIPs, and tourists. Nonetheless, the threat landscape is shifting – and rapidly. Any event of this scale has the potential to attract bad actors, and unfortunately mass sporting events have been no exception. Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats remain a narrow but consequential slice of the risk profile. Furthermore, CBRN threats are being shaped by new technologies, changing geopolitics, and evolving capabilities in the hands of both state and non-state actors.

The following briefing note provides a brief overview and North American preparedness actions and highlights three critical questions for North American policymakers to consider:

1. How are CBRN medical countermeasures distributed and positioned within host cities?
2. How do emerging technologies, such as drones, change the CBRN threat landscape?
3. How are state and local governments reporting on CBRN threats and preparedness – including spending levels and adaptation to emerging threats?

This brief explores each of these questions in turn — drawing on the preparedness investments already underway across all three host nations, the lessons embedded in the historical record of mass event security, and the emerging threat dynamics that are reshaping the CBRN landscape heading into 2026.

Mass Sporting Events as Targets: The Threat Baseline

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is not just the largest World Cup in history — it is the largest sporting event ever hosted in North America. Forty-eight teams, sixteen cities, millions of visitors from around the world. It spans three sovereign nations. And it arrives at an exceptionally tense moment in global security.

Mass gatherings — particularly sporting events — have consistently proven to be attractive targets for bad actors, precisely because of the reach, visibility, and psychological impact of an attack. The historical record is instructive:

• 1972 Munich Olympics – Palestinian militant group Black September took eleven Israeli athletes and coaches hostage; all eleven were killed, along with one German police officer, in what became the defining tragedy of modern event security.
• 1996 Atlanta Olympics – A pipe bomb planted in Centennial Olympic Park by domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph killed two people and injured 111 during the Summer Games.
• 2013 Boston Marathon – Two pressure-cooker bombs detonated near the finish line, killing three spectators and injuring hundreds, with a subsequent manhunt that shut down the city of Boston.

The core lesson from each of these events is that preparedness is a living discipline. It must constantly adapt. Each incident produced meaningful evolutions in how nations plan for mass gatherings. The threat environment is never standing still.

The 2026 World Cup amplifies the stakes. Inflamed geopolitical tensions in arenas like the South China Sea, Ukraine, and the Strait of Hormuz. Geopolitical context is inseparable from the security calculus for this tournament.

Heightened Geopolitical Tensions and the Drone Threat

Among the evolving dimensions of the CBRN threat landscape, drones deserve particular attention. The recent conflicts in Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated how effective unmanned aerial systems can be in asymmetric conflict. Drones are adaptable, low-cost, and increasingly sophisticated. That same capability profile is what makes drones a concern in the context of mass civilian gatherings.

The concern is not merely theoretical. In March 2026, fifteen industrial chemical-spraying drones were stolen from a logistics company in Harrison, New Jersey. The Ceres Air C31 drones – each capable of carrying and dispersing up to 40 gallons of liquid over a 15-acre area in seven minutes – were stolen using a fraudulent bill of lading. The case prompted a joint federal investigation involving Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection. A retired FBI agent described the scenario publicly as “a potential nightmare scenario,” noting that these are industrial sprayers designed to carry and disperse significant amounts of liquid quickly and with precision. Thankfully, the drones were ultimately recovered by the New Jersey State Police in April, 2026 but the incident exposed the potential risks from drones on American soil. The CBRN threat landscape is being reshaped by commercially available technology.

North American Preparedness: What Has Already Been Done

It is important to note the strong investments all three nations have made to prepare for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The United States, Canada, and Mexico entered the World Cup planning process with robust security infrastructure, years of experience hosting major international events, and well-established cross-border coordination mechanisms. Preparedness planning began well before the bid was submitted in 2018. We are now eight years into that process.

United States

The U.S. federal government has committed over $1.1 billion in dedicated security and preparedness funding across its eleven host cities, through two major grant programs and transit infrastructure investment.

• FIFA World Cup Grant Program (FWCGP) — $625 million: Administered by FEMA and established under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (signed July 2025), this program enables host cities to conduct operational exercises, perform staff background checks, strengthen cybersecurity, fund emergency response, and procure CBRNE equipment including personal protective equipment, terrorism incident prevention tools, and emergency supplies. DHS has designated the 78 U.S.-based matches as Special Event Assessment Rating (SEAR) I and II events.
• Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) Grant Program — $250 million: A separate FEMA allocation to strengthen airspace awareness and counter-drone capabilities, building long-term infrastructure beyond the World Cup.
• Federal Transit Administration Funding — $100 million: Distributed to host cities to prepare public transportation for the influx of visitors.

Canada

Canada’s total federal commitment to World Cup hosting support is approximately $465 million (CAD). Up to $145 million is directed specifically at enhanced security operations in Toronto and Vancouver. This includes policing overtime, intelligence coordination, emergency services, transit partners, and public safety teams across match venues, training sites, and fan festivals.

Mexico

Mexico’s security approach is centered on personnel deployment and infrastructure investment rather than a single dedicated grant program. The federal government committed to deploying 100,000 security personnel across its three host cities (Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey) supported by military vehicles, aircraft, drones, and strengthened surveillance systems. Public disclosure of dedicated security-specific expenditures is less detailed than that of the U.S. and Canada.

Questions for North American Policymakers

In light of the changing threat landscape and the proximity of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the following questions are offered as prompts for deeper inquiry. They are grounded in the CBRN preparedness experience from around the globe.

The existence of stockpiles is not the same as effective access to them. Centralized national stockpiles represent an enormous investment in countermeasure capacity. Nonetheless, in a geographically dispersed, 16-city event spanning three countries, the question of positioning is operationally decisive. In a CBRN incident, minutes matter. The difference between centralized and decentralized pre-positioning is the difference between an effective response and a catastrophic one.

Sub-questions worth exploring:

• Are countermeasures staged within operationally meaningful distance of venues and fan zones?
• What is the authorization chain for deployment – and has it been pre-authorized for likely scenarios?
• Do state and local first responders know where the stockpiles are and how to access them?
• How does cross-border coordination work for the availability of CBRN countermeasures host cities?

The New Jersey drone theft is one data point. It sits within a broader pattern: the convergence of commercially available technology with CBRN delivery potential. Agricultural drones, autonomous vehicles, AI-assisted targeting, and widely available technical knowledge are collectively reshaping the threat model that mass event planners inherited from the post-9/11 era.

Beyond drones, policymakers should be asking how preparedness frameworks are accounting for:

• Advances in synthetic biology that lower the barrier to biological agent production
• Commercially available chemical precursors and dispersal technologies
• The use of AI to assist in planning or executing attacks
• Swarm drone scenarios that exceed the capacity of current detection systems

The question for North America is how technological threat evolution is being tracked and translated into updated preparedness protocols at the state and local level, not just at the federal level.

Preparedness reporting serves two functions: accountability and adaptation. It allows policymakers to assess whether investments are working, and it forces a structured review of whether plans remain fit for purpose as the threat landscape changes. The question is whether current reporting frameworks are doing either job well in the CBRN domain.

This matters especially because the threat landscape is not static. Plans developed in 2022 or 2023 may not have incorporated the drone threat profile now visible in 2026. Reporting frameworks that are built around compliance rather than adaptation will not surface those gaps.

Policymakers should consider:

• Whether state CBRN preparedness plans have been formally updated to reflect emerging technology threats, including drones
• Whether exercise outcomes (particularly joint tabletop exercises involving CBRN scenarios) are feeding back into plan revisions
• How spending on CBRN-specific preparedness compares across host states, and what the variation reveals
• Whether Canadian and Mexican preparedness reporting is accessible to U.S. federal partners in a way that supports genuine tri-national coordination

A Note on North America’s Strong Foundation

North America enters the 2026 FIFA World Cup with a genuinely strong security foundation: experienced host cities, substantial federal investment, well-functioning cross-border relationships, and years of planning. That foundation matters. As North American cities continue to prepare for an exciting sporting event, the questions outlined above can serve as a useful guide to build on the foundation of preparedness.

Rafa Biodefense welcomes further dialogue on any of the questions raised here and are available to support more targeted analysis as the tournament approaches.

Appendix: Sources Consulted and Further Reading

All sources accessed May 2026.

This brief was prepared by Rafa Biodefense. It is intended for policy discussion purposes only. CONFIDENTIAL.