It’s been a long 16-year wait for Paraguayan soccer fans, and many are now willing to spend thousands of dollars to see their team play in the World Cup in California.
“Fútbol [soccer] is part of our passion,” says Viviana Figueredo, who lives in South Jordan, Utah. Figueredo, who has already been at Paraguay’s training session in San Jose, is planning to be in town for all of her team’s three games in California, driving or flying back and forth each time. She says eight family members will join from Paraguay.
For Paraguay’s opening game against the U.S. in Los Angeles on Friday, Figueredo, 43, plans to drive with her husband, daughter, mother and 10 friends to support and enjoy the atmosphere around her national team’s debut in this World Cup, but doesn’t plan to go to the game because prices for the match are among the highest set by FIFA for the whole tournament.
“L.A. is beyond our possibilities,” she says.
ALSO SEE: World Cup legends intersect as torch is prepared to be passed
Figueredo and her family hope to go to one of Paraguay’s matches in the Bay Area, planning to spend up to $500 per ticket. For their L.A. trip, she estimates they’ll spend up to $2,500 in transportation, food, three nights of accommodations and souvenirs. Figueredo, who is originally from Paraguay’s capital of Asunción and has been in the U.S. for 11 years, has a small maintenance business and is also the president of the Association of Paraguayans in Utah.
“The World Cup is every four years and it’ll be some time before it’s so close to us, so it’s worth it,” says Figueredo.
“It’s an enormous joy. Something difficult to explain,” says Miguel Zaracho, 69, president of the Paraguayan Soccer League of New York, who plans to come with two friends to the Bay Area to see Paraguay’s matches against Turkey and Australia at Levi’s Stadium. “Paraguayans have been expecting this for 16 years.” Zaracho works in construction, lives in Westchester, New York and has been in the United States for 42 years.
Zaracho is a lifelong soccer fan who goes to New York City FC’s MLS games about four times a year. He roots for Club Cerro Porteño, the second-winningest team in Paraguay’s professional league. In 1998, Zaracho traveled with his two oldest kids to the World Cup in France. “It was a complete party, people singing” on the streets, he says. “I hope we’ll see that (in the Bay Area), but France is a soccer-mad country. The U.S. is not, but it might become one.”
Jazmín Gustale Gill, 44, founder and managing partner of iThink.VC, a venture capital firm for Latin American startups, plans to travel from Asunción and spend the summer in Palo Alto with her husband and four children to watch her national team play. Gustale received an MBA from Stanford in 2017. Coming back to the Bay Area, she says, is like going back home for her and her family.
“It is a great milestone for the national team after 16 years, especially playing in the U.S.,” says Gustale, who went to several of Paraguay’s qualifying matches. “Fútbol is everything for us Paraguayans.”
She says she got tickets through FIFA’s lotteries, lucking out twice, paying way below current prices to buy tickets online. She bought plane tickets to Miami, then booked the final leg to the Bay Area after Paraguay was assigned to two games at Levi’s.
“California is super expensive,” she says. “That’s why it was important to plan ahead of time.”
ALSO SEE: 12 tidbits to know before the 23rd men’s World Cup, plus what to call all 48 teams
Her mother will join them for the second game in Santa Clara, while her father and three brothers will go to games up and down the West Coast.
With two games in the Bay Area and one in Los Angeles, Paraguay is among the teams traveling the least throughout the group phase. SoFi Stadium and Levi’s Stadium are 350 miles apart.
The last time Paraguay played in a World Cup, in South Africa 2010, it finished first in its group and lost to eventual champion Spain in the quarterfinals, 1-0. To qualify for the World Cup, Paraguay has to compete against some of the best national teams in the world, including Argentina and Brazil. The expansion to 48 teams for the 2026 tournament increased the number of automatic berths for South American teams from four to six. Paraguay qualified in sixth place.
When Paraguay qualified, says Edgar Cantero, a Paraguayan sports journalist who covered Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, “the reaction was that Paraguay would play as a local team in the U.S.” But, he adds, “It’s a really high cost, a very high investment.” Cantero, who is already in Los Angeles for the game against the U.S., explains that some Paraguayans have gone into debt to come to the tournament, but “you have to be making good money as well” to travel to the event.
Joel Núñez, a travel agent with El Turista PY in Asunción, estimates that 5,000 to 6,000 Paraguayans will travel to the U.S. for the World Cup, based on his conversations with other local travel agencies. His agency sells 15-day packages to California for all three group games for $10,000 to $12,000 per person. People who bought these packages, he says, have high purchasing power relative to the rest of the nation, where the average monthly income was about $517 in 2025, according to the National Statistics Institute.
Coming to the U.S. is not only a financial commitment. The shortest flights from Paraguay, says Núñez, take about 20 hours with one or two layovers, but some are up to 40 hours long.
Núñez says his clients were able to get U.S. visas for $185 with proof of travel reservations and tickets to the World Cup. The visa process, which used to take up to four months, was sped up to a matter of days, according to Núñez. Still, some Paraguayans were denied visas, like singer Marilina Bogado, who said she was going to sing Paraguay’s national anthem in one of the games.
Zaracho, whose monthly rent in New York is $2,200, says he plans to spend between $1,000 and $1,500 in California for food, taxis and gifts, after paying $900 for tickets. He’s staying with a friend of a friend in San Jose for free.
“I don’t plan to spare any expense,” he says. “That’s why I work all the time. To enjoy something that only happens every four years.”
— Christian Babcock contributed to this story