Conditional welcome and the politics of refusal in sport mega-events: Derridean hostipitality at the 2026 FIFA World Cup

What happens when a mega-event promises global welcome, yet the political conditions of entry make that welcome conditional?. Grounded in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, this conceptual paper brings Derridean hostipitality, which understands hospitality as inseparable from the host’s power to set the terms of entry, regulate access, and refuse admission, into dialogue with tourism boycott and event scholarship to examine how prospective visitors interpret and respond to politically conditioned welcome within a tournament promoted through narratives of global inclusion, mobility, and shared participation. Based on this theoretical lens, the paper develops a conceptual framework that explains how perceived policy hostility may be interpreted as conditional welcome, activate host–guest boundaries, lead to legitimacy withdrawal, and subsequently shape boycott intention and voluntary tourism refusal. The framework further identifies spatial, market, and symbolic forms of tourism non-consumption, and show how refusal may be expressed through the withholding of physical presence, tourism expenditure, and public or reputational support. By applying Derrida’s theory of hostipitality to tourism non-consumption scholarship, the paper theorises how the politics of reception can become connected to the politics of withholding participation and how refusal may emerge as a politically meaningful form of visitor agency.