Act fast – this might be your last chance to get 2018 World Cup tickets

The final batch of World Cup tickets go on sale on Tuesday. Its not clear from the FIFA website what time on Tuesday, but I suspect it is 00:00 in Moscow, which would be 9pm on Monday in the UK and 6pm on Monday in Brazil. Here’s what you need to know.

World Cup tickets go on sale in the first come, first served part of the second sales phase on Tuesday. If you are planning to go to matches in Russia, this may be your last chance to get tickets (a few tickets will go on sale later as people return tickets). I bought tickets in the the first come, first served part of the first sales phase and I also bought tickets for the World Cup in Brazil. Based on this experience, if you are planning to buy tickets this week, my advice would be the following:

Tip 1: Wake up early (or go to bed late) and get in line quickly; demand for tickets is hot so the matches go fast, especially the good ones. As I highlighted above, it is unclear exactly what time these tickets go on sale on Tuesday, but I would assume that is midnight on Monday night, Russian time (which is also 00:00 Tuesday morning, Russian time). Moscow is three hours ahead of London so that would be 9pm UK time on Monday night and 6pm on Monday in Brazil. The cheaper category three tickets go quickly.

Tip 2: Act fast. You will wait in a long queue before you can purchase. But once you get in the online room where you can purchase the tickets, you have a limited time to make your purchase. In the meantime, other people across the world are buying tickets too and the good ones are going fast. Bear in mind that even after you have selected your games, and click buy, you still need to fill in your personal details, details of your guests and payment details (that takes around five minutes so make sure you click yes, I want to buy, at least that long before your session is set to expire).

Tip 3: Be persistent. If you get some weird error message, don’t give up, keep trying; this happened to me and I had to persist – the issue, I think, was that there were so many people trying to buy tickets, that whenever I selected the ones I wanted, somebody else had selected them fractionally before me, thus giving the error message and not letting me buy. I kept going, trying over and over, and eventually I was able to buy some tickets.

Tip 4: Check your credit card limit – tickets aint cheap. (See prices below.)

Nobody said it was cheap

Tip 5: Get your Visa card ready. I think they only accept payment on a visa card, in which case if you have one, keep it handy.

Tip 6: Check the fixture list before the day – it helps if you know what you want and can get your purchases done quickly.

Tip 7: If you buy tickets, but change your mind, you can sell them, but at a cost. FIFA will start distributing the tickets to fans (by post) sometime in April. Only after that can you return them to FIFA – you need to courier them to Switzerland, pay some kind of admin fee and FIFA put them up for sale; if they don’t sell them, you lose your money. (Which is obviously a big risk, but I think they probably will sell them – demand is high, for all games.) I did this for some of my tickets in Brazil and I got the money back from FIFA, and although it was a faff and I had to pay the admin fee, and postal charges.

Tip 8: Get a fan ID. If you want to sell your tickets and don’t want to return them to FIFA, you may want to sell the tickets or give them to somebody you know. I don’t think FIFA allow this, so I can’t condone it, but in reality I think lots of people do it. When you buy tickets you need to put on your name and the name of your ‘guests’ and these names get printed on the tickets. They didn’t check names in Brazil, or South Africa – I’m not sure if they will in Russia. I guess not, although in Russia there is this fan ID thing, so they may ask for that before they let you into the stadium. And to get the fan ID you need to have purchased tickets, or somebody purchased tickets for you. A fan ID is valid for the whole tournament. For foreign visitors I think it gives you some free access to public transport and it gives you a waiver on paying for a Russian visa. If you are buying tickets from somebody else, make sure you have a fan ID, or at least understand how this works. If you understand how it works better than me, why not leave a comment below and share with the world.

Tip 9: Watch Brazil – five times world Cup winners and most exciting national team to watch. Brazil are in group E and these are their fixtures:

17 June – Brazil v Switzerland, 21:00 (local time), Rostov-On-Don

22 June – Brazil v Costa Rica, 15:00 (local time), Saint Petersburg

27 June – Brazil v Serbia, 21:00 (local time), Moscow (Spartak Stadium)

Assuming they win their group, they would then play they on 2 July in Samara. If they win that, they would play in Kazan in the quarter finals on 6 June. The winner of that match plays the semi final in St. Petersburg on 10 July and the final is in Moscow on 15 July.

I’ll post more about the World Cup closer to the time. Stay tuned. To receive email alerts and never miss a post, go back to the homepage and sign up by clicking the email button on top right hand side. Or if you’re on a mobile device, go back to the homepage and scroll down to the bottom of the feed and click on the email sign up button there.

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