FIFA reverses Spanish-language ban at World Cup 2026 after viral Hakimi moment sparks outrage

FIFA has reversed its restriction on Spanish at World Cup 2026 press conferences, announcing updated regulations on Monday after a wave of fury that erupted within days of the tournament’s opening matches in North America.

The row came to a head over the weekend when players including Brazil’s Vinicius Junior and Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi were compelled to field questions in English during official media appearances, despite both being fluent Spanish speakers. The flashpoint that went viral involved Hakimi, born in Madrid, who was poised to respond to a question from a Mexican journalist when a FIFA official abruptly cut off the reporter and instructed him to switch to English. Hakimi’s dry response — “How do I answer, in English or in Spanish?” — spread rapidly across social media.

Under the rules in place during the tournament’s opening days, players, coaches and journalists were limited to English and the official languages of the two competing nations. FIFA initially denied any blanket ban, citing a shortage of translation services.

The updated regulations allow journalists to pose questions in Spanish at any official World Cup press conference, and players and coaches are now free to answer in Spanish regardless of which nations are playing. Translation services will also be made available throughout.

The backlash drew sharp criticism from language campaigners and cultural institutions, who pointed to the obvious contradiction of sidelining Spanish at a tournament co-hosted by Mexico and the United States — a country home to more than 60 million people of Hispanic origin, of whom over 43 million identify Spanish as their mother tongue.

The Instituto Cervantes, Spain’s state body for the promotion of Spanish language and culture worldwide, had been among the most vocal critics. Its director, Luis Garcia Montero, described the initial policy as “baffling” and said FIFA had “put itself offside” by marginalising one of the world’s most widely spoken languages, adding that the approach “made no sense at all”. The institute subsequently welcomed the reversal in a social media post.

The episode drew attention away from the football itself in the tournament’s early days and raised broader questions about FIFA’s planning for an event staged across a continent where Spanish is the dominant language for hundreds of millions of fans.