The peace prize FIFA created for Donald Trump may not outlive its first year. At its Council meeting in Zurich this month, world football's governing body ordered a formal review of the FIFA Peace Prize — the award its president, Gianni Infantino, invented last November and handed to the American president weeks later — after member associations demanded it be scrapped or changed. If the review ends the prize, Trump will remain its first and only winner.
The task has gone to FIFA's 22-member Football Social Responsibility Committee. FIFA Vice-President Debbie Hewitt set out its remit: the committee "will consider, first of all, how the peace prize came about, whether it should have come about, whether it should have been awarded in the way that it was, who made that decision and whether or not it should be taken out or whether it should be reformed." Infantino himself confirmed the process, saying the committee will analyse the award and bring a proposal, with "a decision will be taken at the next FIFA Council meeting" — in Doha on December 16.
The prize under review is the "FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World," announced on November 5, 2025, as an annual award for individuals who have taken "exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace." "In an increasingly unsettled and divided world, it's fundamental to recognise the outstanding contribution of those who work hard to end conflicts and bring people together in a spirit of peace," Infantino said at the launch. "Football stands for peace." What FIFA has never published is any way the winner is chosen: no nominees, no judges, no criteria beyond those launch words. Human Rights Watch wrote to FIFA asking for the nominees, the judges, the criteria and the selection process, and received no response. The Associated Press reported that when the prize was announced, some of FIFA's own senior officials were caught off guard and learned of it from the media.
From the day the prize appeared, one name stood in front of it — as expectation, never as an announcement. FIFA named no recipient at the launch, but the speculation settled on Trump at once: he was due at the December 5 World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the venue he chairs; he had spent the year openly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize; and a month earlier the Nobel had gone elsewhere. Asked directly in Miami on the day of the announcement whether Trump would receive the new prize, Infantino laughed and replied: "On the 5th of December, you will see." By the day of the draw, the Associated Press was describing Trump as having been "heavily expected" and "heavily favored" to receive it.
The expectation rested on a closeness nobody had to guess at, because it was conducted in public. Infantino called Trump "my great friend" over dinner at Davos in 2020, attended his inauguration in January 2025, watched the Club World Cup final beside him at MetLife Stadium that July, and stood next to him in the Oval Office on August 22, 2025, when the two announced the draw would be held at the Kennedy Center — the day Infantino handed him a gold replica World Cup trophy, saying it was "for winners only." He was in Egypt in October 2025 when Trump's Gaza peace plan was signed at Sharm el-Sheikh. Trump, for his part, has called Infantino "probably the most respected man in sports."
On October 9, 2025, as Trump's Gaza ceasefire was being sealed, Infantino posted that Trump "definitely deserves the Nobel Peace Prize" for his decisive actions. The next day the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, as its winner. Trump took the decision with public good humour: Machado, he told reporters, had called him to say she was accepting the prize "in my honour," because she believed he deserved it. "I didn't say, 'Then give it to me,' though maybe she should have," he said. His White House was blunter — Communications Director Steven Cheung said the committee had proved it places "politics over peace."
Four weeks after the Nobel announcement, FIFA had a peace prize of its own. On December 5, 2025, on the World Cup draw stage at the Kennedy Center, Infantino presented Trump with a gold trophy depicting hands holding up the world, a gold medal the president promptly hung around his own neck, and a certificate recognising his actions to "promote peace and unity around the world." "This is your prize. This is your peace prize," Infantino told him. "You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way." FIFA's stated grounds were Trump's pivotal role in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and his efforts to end other conflicts, among them the peace treaty between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Trump called it "truly one of the great honors of my life," said "we saved millions and millions of lives," and added: "The world is a safer place now."
The criticism began immediately and has now reached FIFA's own Council table. The human rights group FairSquare filed a complaint with FIFA's Ethics Committee in December 2025, arguing that the award and Infantino's public endorsements of Trump breached the duty of political neutrality FIFA's own ethics code places on its officials, and that the prize was Infantino's unilateral creation; a second complaint, backed by more than 100,000 people, followed in September 2026. Norway's football federation has filed complaints of its own, and its president, Lise Klaveness, has said plainly: "We want to see it abolished. We don't think it's part of FIFA's mandate to give such a prize. We think we have a Nobel institute that does that job independently already." Former UN official Craig Mokhiber accused Infantino of inventing the prize "in order to curry favour with Donald Trump."
Infantino has answered his critics on the record. Defending the award in February, he argued that Trump had been "instrumental in resolving conflicts and saving lives," and said he expected the American president to receive a Nobel Peace Prize at some point. The White House has publicly defended Trump's receipt of the prize. What neither defence settles is the question FIFA's Council has now formally asked: not whether Trump deserved an honour, but whether football's world body should have created one in this way at all. That answer comes in Doha on December 16 — and whatever it is, the first name on the FIFA Peace Prize will stay an American president's, put there in Washington, on the stage of the World Cup the United States has just hosted with Canada and Mexico.
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