How can I support England at World Cup 2026 when people who want me deported have claimed the flag?

After two consecutive summers marked by racist unrest and far-right mobilisation, England’s major football tournaments no longer feel like moments of national celebration for black, brown and migrant communities.

For many of us, “football’s coming home” now sounds more like a warning than a celebratory chant. The St George’s Cross and England kit can no longer be separated from the political movements that weaponise them.

So, as flags multiply across our cities and England shirts flood high streets, communities like mine brace for the familiar spike in hate crime, racial harassment and chest-thumping nationalism dressed up as patriotism.

It has been marched through neighbourhoods during attacks on black and brown people. As recently as last September men bearing the flag punched an innocent man to the ground while brandishing a knife.

English football is no better – racist hooliganism has long been entangled with fans of the national team. And while the far right insists Operation Raise the Colours is about harmless patriotism, crosses were painted on or near mosques and community sites – graffiti later investigated as potential hate crimes. All of this against a backdrop of record levels of Islamophobic hate.

The truth is uncomfortable: we are constantly told the flag belongs to all of us, yet for many it remains the banner under which our ancestors were conquered, enslaved, divided and beaten. And symbols cannot be reclaimed while they are still being used to intimidate and assault people in the streets.

So fans are left with a dilemma: when England’s Three Lions step onto the pitch at the 2026 World Cup do we ignore racism for the sake of national unity, or confront it and risk being cast as the killjoy who ‘makes everything about race’ before the first ball has even been kicked?

Gareth Southgate’s England once sold us a different story. A team that spoke the language of unity. A squad led by black British players. A fan culture that, briefly, made room for black and brown bodies, in stadiums, in pubs, in the streets. For a moment, it felt possible to believe the atmosphere around England might genuinely change.

And football has the power to unite us. Mo Salah’s success as one of the Premier League’s greatest players challenged Islamophobic stereotypes and expanded who many imagined English football could belong to. Arsenal’s title celebrations brought multiracial, multilingual, intergenerational scenes across North London – offering a glimpse of what football solidarity can actually look like.

But in the current climate of racist unrest and anti-migrant mobilisation, fears of another summer of violence fuelled by football nationalism no longer feel exaggerated. England must confront anti-migrant politics, the mainstreaming of far-right rhetoric and the way national symbols are used in public space – while defending migrant communities. 

Read more:

• What the wave of St George’s flags across England means for national identity
• The UK approach to replacing the Human Rights Act is just as worrying as the replacement itself
• Dear England star Joseph Fiennes: ‘Gareth Southgate is a quiet revolutionary’

Real unity will not come from compulsory flag-waving or shallow appeals to patriotism. And anti-racism cannot just mean putting Bukayo Saka on a billboard every two years.

Migrants make this country. We staff its hospitals, deliver its food, care for its elderly, score its goals and keep its cities moving. Yet every few years we are asked to disappear behind symbols increasingly used to threaten us. So many of us won’t be hanging flags from our windows or pulling on England shirts this year.

Not because we hate this country, but because we know exactly what hatred looks like and we know the symbols it marches behind.

Ravishaan Rahel Muthiah is the director of communications at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants

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