​The Sporting News originally ran a piece titled Why U.S. men split equally $16 million World Cup prize with USWNT. Please add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here. The United States men’s national team secured $16 million for advancing to the Round of 16 at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A surprising note for many on social media is that half of that prize money is designated for the U.S. women’s national team as well. Yet this arrangement isn’t new; it has been an established practice for four years.
This split is a feature of the teams’ most recent collective bargaining agreements. As ESPN’s Jeff Kassouf explains, “Men’s and women’s players equally share World Cup prize money under terms of the collective bargaining agreements that were ratified by U.S. Soccer with both national teams in 2022.” Those agreements followed nearly six years of public advocacy and a lawsuit from the women’s national team demanding equal pay. Under the CBAs, U.S. Soccer retains 20% of the prize money from each World Cup, while the remaining 80% is split equally between the men’s and women’s players who make the respective World Cup rosters. That 40% portion amounts to $6.4 million per team and roughly $246,153.85 per player.
The money is distributed between the 26 players on the U.S. men’s roster for the 2026 World Cup and the 26 players who will be on the U.S. women’s World Cup roster for 2027. The same principle applies in reverse when the women compete in their World Cup as well. Kassouf notes that U.S. Soccer pays both its men’s and women’s players $10,000 for each World Cup match, regardless of the match’s outcome. Had the U.S. men defeated Belgium and advanced to the quarterfinals, they would have earned $20 million in prize money, which would have left $8 million for each of the men’s and women’s teams.
Additional context around the 2026 World Cup prize pool notes that the tournament winner takes home $51 million. As lighthearted as some of the surrounding commentary can be, the underlying structure of prize distribution has been a point of discussion since the 2022 CBAs, reflecting a broader conversation about equal pay and the sharing of prize money among U.S. soccer’s male and female players.