For 92 years, every referee who walked onto a men's World Cup pitch was a man. That changed in Qatar, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup is building on that foundation with six women among the 170 match officials appointed for the tournament. They are not symbolic presences. They are six of the best referees in the world, selected through a three-year evaluation process that assessed every major competition FIFA runs.

All six come from CONCACAF — two central referees, three assistant referees, and one video match official. The fact that the host region produces the entire female contingent is not a coincidence. North and Central American football has invested in women's officiating at every level for two decades, and this tournament is the proof.

What makes this group remarkable is not just the number but the depth of experience behind it. Between them, these six officials have worked Olympic Games, Women's World Cup finals, Gold Cup matches, and the top men's domestic leagues across North America. They did not arrive at this tournament through a separate door. They earned their place through the same evaluation process as everyone else.

Female referees at the 2026 World Cup

For 92 years, every referee who walked onto a men's World Cup pitch was a man. That changed in Qatar, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup is building on that foundation with six women among the 170 match officials appointed for the tournament. They are not symbolic presences. They are six of the best referees in the world, selected through a three-year evaluation process that assessed every major competition FIFA runs.

All six come from CONCACAF — two central referees, three assistant referees, and one video match official. The fact that the host region produces the entire female contingent is not a coincidence. North and Central American football has invested in women's officiating at every level for two decades, and this tournament is the proof.

The six female referees at the 2026 World Cup

The table below gives a quick overview of all six officials, their role, and their country. The sections that follow go deeper into each one.

Tori Penso

Tori Penso is the first American woman ever selected as a central referee at a men's World Cup. That sentence carries weight. She began refereeing at 14 in Florida, worked her way through the NWSL and USL Championship, and by 2020 had become the first woman in 20 years to referee an MLS regular-season match. She did not stop there.

In 2023, Penso became the first American official to referee a senior World Cup final, taking charge of the women's tournament decider between Spain and England. Two years later, she was the only female referee selected for the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. Her appointment to this tournament is the logical next step in a career built on merit at every stage. On June 18, 2026, Penso took charge of the Czechia vs South Africa group stage match in Atlanta — the second time in history a woman has refereed a men's World Cup match, and the first time an American woman has done so.

Katia Itzel García

Katia Itzel García grew up in Mexico City wanting to be a professional footballer. When she realized there was no professional women's league in Mexico, she picked up a whistle instead. That decision, made out of necessity, eventually produced one of the most decorated referees in CONCACAF. By 2024, García had become the first woman in over 20 years to referee a Liga MX top-division match — a league that for generations had been completely closed to female officials. That same year, she became the first woman to referee a United States men's national team friendly.

At 32, she arrives at this World Cup with the 2023 Women's World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics already on her record. During the opening days of the 2026 tournament, she has served as fourth official in several group stage matches, gaining her footing on the world's biggest stage before her first central refereeing appointment.

Kathryn Nesbitt

Kathryn Nesbitt is the only one of the six to have also officiated at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar — making her the bridge between the two chapters of this story. Before football consumed her career, Nesbitt was a chemistry professor. The discipline and precision that defines her work on the touchline is, perhaps, not so surprising given that background.

In Qatar, Nesbitt was part of the historic crew that made up the first all-female officiating team in men's World Cup history. At this tournament, she forms the all-American, all-female trio alongside Penso and Mayo that officiated Czechia vs South Africa — only the second all-female crew ever to take charge of a men's World Cup match.

Brooke Mayo

Brooke Mayo began refereeing at 13 years old in Garland, Texas, long before women officiating men's professional football was a realistic career prospect. She played collegiate football at Tennessee Tech and spent years building her credentials through MLS and the U-20 Women's World Cup before earning a place on FIFA's international list.

Her first World Cup match came on June 18, alongside Penso and Nesbitt, in front of a packed stadium in Atlanta. Mayo has spoken directly about what this moment means — not just for herself, but for the women who could not yet see themselves in these roles. "In my career I have witnessed and been a part of many firsts for women," she said. "I know it is not because we are the first women that have been capable, but rather the first time that we have been provided the opportunity."

Sandra Ramírez

Sandra Ramírez is 37 years old and from Guadalajara. Before arriving at this World Cup, she had already worked the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2023 U-20 Women's World Cup — a résumé that reflects the quiet consistency that earns trust in high-stakes officiating environments. When asked about her World Cup appointment, Ramírez offered the kind of answer that tends to stay with you: "We are going to go and kill it. There is no other way."

She forms part of the same crew as García for central refereeing assignments, with both representing Mexico on a stage their country has never had female officials reach at this level before.

Tatiana Guzmán

Tatiana Guzmán operates from the video review center in Dallas, making real-time decisions that shape the outcome of matches without ever being seen by the crowd. She is the only female video match official at this tournament, and her path to it is one of the most unusual in the entire officiating pool. Guzmán is a trained environmental quality specialist who also competed in baseball, volleyball, and judo before committing to football. She became the first woman to referee a men's first-division match in Nicaragua — a country where the infrastructure for women in officiating barely existed.

Female referees at the World Cup — how it started

The 2022 tournament in Qatar was, in the full sweep of World Cup history, a genuine rupture. For nine decades, the question of women officiating at the men's World Cup had simply never been put to the test. Then FIFA appointed six female officials for Qatar, and in the opening week of the group stage, the sport crossed a line it will never step back behind.

Stéphanie Frappart of France became the first woman to referee a men's World Cup match, taking charge of Poland vs Mexico in the group stage. A few days later, she led the first all-female officiating crew in the tournament's history — Frappart as central referee, with Neuza Back of Brazil and Karen Díaz Medina of Mexico as her assistants — for the Germany vs Costa Rica group stage match. That crew, that match, that moment mattered in a way that the scoreline never could.

The comparison between the two tournaments tells a story in numbers, but also in what those numbers mean.

The headline figure is the same — six — but the composition has shifted. In 2026, the number of central referees has dropped from three to two, but a video match official has been added for the first time. And where Qatar's contingent came from three different confederations (UEFA, CAF, AFC), every female official at this tournament comes from CONCACAF. That is partly geography, partly the result of decades of deliberate development in the region.

Karen Díaz Medina, who was an assistant in Qatar, is not among the 2026 appointees. Instead, her compatriot García steps up as a central referee — a significant elevation. The baton has been passed, and it has been passed upward. Kari Seitz, the American who became the first female assessor for FIFA's refereeing program and drove much of this change from within the institution, put it directly: "Truthfully, we should have more women at this World Cup than we do. So we've got to keep fighting."

That tension — between how far things have come and how far they still need to go — is exactly where football officiating stands in 2026. The progress is real. The ceiling has not yet disappeared.

Explore more on Historical Soccer: browse the full 2026 FIFA World Cup results and stats as the tournament unfolds, or explore the complete World Cup archive covering every edition from Uruguay 1930 to today