Spain’s 2026 World Cup triumph was overshadowed by a surge in racist and Islamophobic abuse online, with the tournament emerging as a major trigger for hate speech and teenage star Lamine Yamal becoming one of its most prominent targets, Anadolu reports.
According to a social media monitoring bulletin published by the Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia (OBERAXE), which operates under Spain’s Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, 40,861 pieces of content linked to hate speech and discriminatory narratives were detected online in June.
Sports accounted for 16% of the monitored content, ranking as the second-largest trigger of hate speech after issues related to public insecurity, which accounted for 69% of the detected material.
OBERAXE said a “significant” presence of racist and Islamophobic messages targeting national teams, supporters and players was observed during the World Cup. The report particularly highlighted the volume of hostile content directed at Lamine Yamal, whose background and identity were at the center of discriminatory comments.
Yamal becomes unwilling symbol of identity tensions
Born in Spain and representing the Spanish national team, Lamine Yamal has become one of the country’s most prominent football figures.
His father is of Moroccan origin, while his mother comes from Equatorial Guinea. His story reflects the diversity of Spanish society, but his identity has also made him a recurring target of racist and discriminatory comments on social media.
Ahead of the semifinal between Spain and France, another controversy had already placed identity and nationality at the center of debate.
Former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy wrote in a column published after the Spanish national team’s match against Belgium that France was a team “without French people,” prompting strong reactions.
Asked about the remarks at a news conference, Yamal chose not to fuel the controversy and defended football’s role as a tool for social integration.
“If football serves any purpose, it is to integrate, at the level of society,” the player said, describing both France and Spain as examples of integration.
His comments reinforced Yamal’s image as a symbol of diversity in Spanish football at a time when his identity was being targeted in discriminatory posts.
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Another controversy erupted a few days before the World Cup final after an Argentine journalist referred to Yamal by invoking his Moroccan origins. The remarks prompted reactions in Spain, with some accusing the journalist of weaponizing the player’s family background to belittle him.
These incidents formed part of a broader trend documented by OBERAXE: people of North African origin were targeted in 88% of the hateful content analyzed, an increase of 10 percentage points compared with May.
Hate speech becomes increasingly dehumanizing
The OBERAXE bulletin also documented a concerning shift in the nature of messages circulating online.
Content that dehumanized or seriously degraded targeted groups represented 48% of the total, an increase of 25 percentage points in one month. Meanwhile, 32% of the messages portrayed targeted groups as a threat, while 10% called for their expulsion.
In 6% of cases, the content encouraged violence. Three percent praised individuals who attacked the targeted groups, while 1% sought to discredit them.
The tone of the posts was also overwhelmingly aggressive. Some 89% of the analyzed content used explicitly hostile language, including insults, threats and derogatory remarks targeting migrants and other racialized groups.
Another 10% used irony or sarcasm to spread discriminatory messages under the guise of humor.
The use of images, videos, memes and coded language poses an additional challenge for online platforms. Such elements appeared in 32% of the recorded content, facilitating its spread and making it more difficult for automated moderation systems to detect.
Of all the content selected and reported by OBERAXE, 61% was removed by digital platforms, down from 65% in May.
Removal rates varied considerably between platforms. TikTok recorded the highest rate, removing 98% of reported content, followed by X at 93%, Facebook at 62%, Instagram at 32% and YouTube at just 8%.
OBERAXE also identified a significant difference depending on the reporting method. Content reported by individual users had a removal rate of 10%. Of that content, 5% was removed within the first 24 hours, 1% during the following 48 hours, and 4% within one week.
Content reported through the “trusted flagger” channel recorded a removal rate of 51%.
According to the observatory, the results demonstrate the greater effectiveness of this specialized mechanism for detecting and reporting potentially illegal content.
Social media becomes breeding ground for disinformation
The World Cup period was also marked by the circulation of false or manipulated content concerning Yamal and other figures involved in the tournament.
Content generated or altered using artificial intelligence was used to fuel misleading narratives about the Spanish player and his religious identity.
Among the content that was fact-checked was an AI-generated video falsely claiming that Spanish news channel Canal 24 Horas had announced an investigation into Yamal for “radical Islamism.”
Other posts also attempted to create false narratives involving religious signs or symbols supposedly worn by the player.
These examples illustrate an evolution in online hate speech: insults and direct attacks can now be accompanied by fabricated or manipulated visual material, accelerating their circulation and making verification more complex.
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Football reflects divisions within society
Beyond the case of Yamal, the OBERAXE report showed that online hate speech exists within a broader social and political context.
Content related to public policies accounted for 11% of the analyzed messages, with much of it focusing on debates surrounding inclusion and integration measures, as well as the Spanish government’s extraordinary migrant regularization process.
Content related to sexual assault represented 9% of the total, while posts associated with terrorism and the arrival of boats carrying migrants accounted for 3% and 2%, respectively.
Public insecurity, however, remained the leading catalyst for hate speech. According to OBERAXE, many messages established a generalized link between migrants and crime, social tensions or public disorder, sometimes using false or decontextualized information.
Sporting victory confronts persistent digital reality
Spain’s 2026 World Cup triumph offered the country a moment of collective celebration, but it also exposed persistent divisions surrounding identity, origin and religion.
The case of Lamine Yamal embodies several of these tensions: a young Spanish player from an immigrant background and a key figure in a victorious national team, he has become both a symbol of integration and a prominent target of racist and Islamophobic discourse.
OBERAXE’s data showed that the phenomenon extends far beyond football. However, the tournament’s global popularity and the visibility of its players provided discriminatory discourse with a particularly significant space in which to spread.
Through its FARO system, OBERAXE continues to monitor such content to identify trends, triggering events and patterns in how discriminatory messages spread across major digital platforms.
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