Gamechanger? Bosnia’s World Cup Participation Could Create Moment of Collective Pride

The national football team’s participation in the World Cup has the potential to generate shared public emotion in a country best known for intractable divisions.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, football is much more than just a game. The country’s clubs, supporter networks and national team still reflect deeper divisions, polarisation and hostilities connected to identity politics and the country’s overall post-war development.

Since the 1992-5 war, football has often been politically misused to divide the population through competing ethno-nationalist narratives.

Yet while such problems still exist, football has also been used to create spaces and experiences of shared identification that formal politics and other initiatives often fail to produce. The national team brings together different parts of Bosnian society and communities worldwide.

That is why Bosnia’s participation in the 2026 men’s football World Cup, with the national team’s first match against Canada on June 12, matters beyond sport. It carries the potential to generate an uncommon moment of collective pride in a country heavily affected by constitutional dysfunction, demographic decline and social mistrust.

Bosnia is often described as one of the most complicated, dysfunctional and divided countries in the world. Even in football, the common saying that in Bosnia “everything is divided into three” reflects this reality. At the same time, Bosnia’s older football history tells a more complex story about identity, community and society.

The earliest football clubs emerged during the Austro-Hungarian period. They were shaped by different social and political ideas, as well as by local interactions and environments. Some were closely linked to communal and ethnic community-building. Others grew out of workers’ and left-wing political initiatives, as well as more urban forms of identification tied to cities, such as Sarajevo, Tuzla and Banja Luka.

The history of several clubs challenges the simplistic view that football in Bosnia has only been a field for ethnic or national rivalry. The club Zeljeznicar, for example, has its origins in Sarajevo’s railway sector, while Sloboda Tuzla was historically connected to workers and miners in the Tuzla area. Such parts of the their history regarding community and civility contrast with the current situation and perceptions of Bosnia.

From ‘football socialism’ to nationalist hooliganism

Bosnia and Herzegovina supporters at the World Cup European playoff against Wales in Cardiff, Britain, March 2026. Photo: EPA/DIMITRIS LEGAKIS.

In Socialist Yugoslavia, football in Bosnia became more institutionalised and politicised, since the country already had a history of “football socialism”, referring to clubs linked to industrial cities, public companies and factories, as well as to urban and municipal life.

This was the era when Bosnian clubs became major names in Yugoslav football where, for example, FK Sarajevo and Zeljeznicar represented different Sarajevan football traditions, while Velez Mostar came to symbolise a left-leaning and multi-ethnic Mostar.

At the same time, the socialist era also contained authoritarian tendencies. Club names considered nationalist or threatening to the socialist system were banned. Later, tensions and frustrations were mobilised by nationalist politicians and networks that gained support among football hooligans and supporter groups toward the end of the 1980s.

This was the case, for example, among the Crvena Zvezda (Red Star Belgrade) football hooligans who as members of the Serbian Volunteer Guard paramilitary unit under the command of the infamous operative Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, committed war crimes and other atrocities in eastern Bosnia in spring 1992.

During the war, football was separated along ethnic lines, while politics surrounding clubs and supporter networks became tools for the new ethno-nationalist parties and elites. Clubs lost stadiums, players became refugees and soldiers, and football structures fragmented along the same territorial and political lines as the country itself.

The war deeply affected football in the city of Sarajevo, which endured a long siege by the Bosnian Serb military. The Grbavica stadium, home of Zeljeznicar, also became part of the geography of wartime destruction. For many youngsters, playing football outside meant being exposed to risks of being killed by snipers or artillery shells.

Mostar, often described as the birthplace of football in Bosnia and Herzegovina, became the clearest example of this rupture. Velez, long associated with a multi-ethnic and socialist idea of the city, lost access to its historic home, while Zrinjski reemerged as a powerful Croatian club through nationalist symbolism and narratives in a heavily destroyed and divided city.

A reflection of country’s layered identities

Edin Dzeko of Bosnia and Herzegovina (C) celebrates with his teammates after scoring during the World Cup playoff against Wale…