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FIFA Peace Prize could be scrapped year after Donald Trump won inaugural award

Infantino has been FIFA President for 11 years now and is seeking reelection next year. At the FIFA Council meeting, he was forced to apologise on Thursday for “mistakes” in his secretive investment plan for the World Cup.

President Donald Trump is presented with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize by FIFA President Gianni Infantino during the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center, Dec. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo)
President Donald Trump is presented with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize by FIFA President Gianni Infantino during the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center. (AP Photo)

FIFA’s controversial Peace Prize could be discontinued after just one year. The first awardee of the award was US president Donald Trump. But the FIFA Peace Prize finds itself under a cloud because the global governing body of the sport decided at the FIFA Council’s meeting in Zurich on Thursday that FIFA’s social responsibility committee will be tasked with assessing the merits of the award.

According to a report in The Athletic, a 22-member committee will now decide whether the FIFA Peace Prize should continue from this year. The committee could mandate that the award no longer be given to politicians. Or that it could be stopped altogether.

Trump was handed the FIFA Peace Prize by Gianni Infantino just before the 2026 World Cup draw in Washington in December 2025. The report noted that the award was not signed off on by the FIFA Council, the organisation’s decision-making body.

The football social responsibility committee will make its decision known before the next FIFA Council meeting, which will take place in December in Doha.

Infantino has been FIFA President for 11 years now and is seeking reelection next year. At the FIFA Council meeting, he was forced to apologise on Thursday for “mistakes” in his secretive investment plan for the World Cup.

A report by The Associated Press news agency noted that Infantino didn’t provide any of the details that his toughest critics demanded. After the now-aborted $4.2 billion World Cup sell-off plan, there has been a campaign within FIFA to oust him as the president of football’s governing body.

Federation officials from around the world also demanded answers for the Folarin Balogun red-card case at the World Cup where President Donald Trump intervened and FIFA then rescinded the footballer’s card.

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Despite Infantino’s apology, European delegates said they left the meeting disappointed about what they saw as a lack of clarity about the two disputes.

“No satisfactory answers were provided,” said German soccer leader Bernd Neuendorf, one of eight delegates from European soccer confederation UEFA in the 37-member FIFA Council that Infantino chairs.

Infantino provided no documents about the $4.2 billion World Cup sell-off plan he launched and quickly dropped in July amid a fierce backlash led from Europe.

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