United States President Donald Trump has been awarded FIFA’s newly created peace prize at the draw for the 2026 men’s football World Cup.

Trump, who has campaigned aggressively for a Nobel Peace Prize, thanked FIFA on Friday and called the award “one of the great honours of my life”.

The US leader had been heavily favoured to win the football governing body’s inaugural prize.

He and FIFA president Gianni Infantino are close allies, and Infantino had made it clear that he thought Trump should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This is your prize, this is your peace prize,” Infantino said at the glitzy, celebrity-studded ceremony at Washington’s Kennedy Center.

Infantino has repeatedly spoken about football as a unifier for the world, but the prize is a departure from the federation’s traditional focus on sport.

The US, along with Canada and Mexico, will host the football tournament next year. The prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney, and the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, were at the ceremony, too.

In a nod to Trump’s love of spectacle, Infantino, who served as master of ceremonies, had the three leaders stand behind brightly coloured podiums – game-show style – to draw their teams.

After the draw, they all posed for a selfie with Infantino.

“This will be unique, this will be stellar, this will be spectacular,” Infantino said at the outset of the ceremony, referring to next year’s games.

The men’s World Cup will be held from June 11 to July 19, 2026, with a record 104 matches in 16 host cities. It will kick off with Mexico playing South Africa at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, followed by South Korea against a playoff winner.

The US and Canada will join the World Cup party the following day.

FIFA award under scrutiny

FIFA announced the annual peace prize in November, saying it would recognise “individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace”.

A video prior to the presentation celebrated Trump for resolving the war in Gaza and trying to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The trophy, a gold-plated globe carried by upraised hands, was considerably larger than the Nobel, which is just a simple medal.

Trump was given a medal as well and donned it as Infantino lauded him. The president deserved the award for “promoting peace and unity around the world”, he said.

“Thank you very much. This is truly one of the great honours of my life. And beyond awards, Gianni and I were discussing this, we saved millions and millions of lives,” Trump said.

“The world is a safer place now.”

The US, he said, was “not doing too well” before he took office, but now “we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world”.

Earlier, Trump told reporters he did not care about the prize, but noted that he had “settled eight wars” in his 10 months in office.

“I don’t need prizes. I need to save lives,” Trump said. “I saved millions and millions of lives, and that’s really what I want to do.”

The claim that Trump has ended eight wars this year is widely disputed.

Much work remains before most of the conflicts the president claims to have ended, including Israel’s war on Gaza, can actually be considered resolved.

Trump received the award as he continues to face criticism from Democrats and rights groups for launching a huge US military build-up around Venezuela and ordering deadly air strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats.

He has also ordered a hardline migration crackdown, threatening to move World Cup games from cities where he has sent troops and freezing asylum decisions from 19 countries – including World Cup participants Haiti and Iran.

It also came days after the president demeaned Somali immigrants in the US as “garbage” – triggering an outcry both at home and abroad.

There has been little transparency around FIFA’s peace prize.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it has written to FIFA to request a list of the nominees, the judges, the criteria and the selection process – and has received no response.

“FIFA’s so-called peace prize is being awarded against a backdrop of violent detentions of immigrants, national guard deployments in US cities, and the obsequious cancellation of FIFA’s own anti-racism and anti-discrimination campaigns,” Minky Worden, who oversees sport for HRW, said in a statement.