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While tens of thousands of fans filed into SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California on June 21 to watch Iran face Belgium in a FIFA World Cup group stage match, a very different kind of crowd gathered outside the gates.
Roughly 200 protesters assembled near the stadium to condemn the Iranian government and shine a spotlight on the violent crackdown that killed thousands of Iranians in January. The match itself ended 0-0.
What happened outside SoFi Stadium
Protesters chanted “Freedom for Iran” and waved the pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flag, a symbol of opposition to the current Islamic Republic. The rally was largely peaceful despite heightened security that included road closures and a visible police presence around the venue.
FIFA has banned the Lion and Sun flag from stadiums, classifying it as a political symbol. A California court upheld that ban earlier in June 2026, meaning fans could not bring it inside the venue.
The demonstration wasn’t a one-off. Similar protests took place during Iran’s opening World Cup match against New Zealand.
Los Angeles is home to one of the largest Iranian diaspora communities in the world. The neighborhood of Westwood and surrounding areas have long been nicknamed “Tehrangeles” for the concentration of Iranian-Americans who settled there over the decades following the 1979 revolution.
The January massacre
The protests center on events from January 2026, when Iranian security forces launched a sweeping crackdown on domestic unrest. Estimates suggest as many as 30,000 people were killed during just two days of violence on January 8 and 9.
The protesters outside SoFi Stadium called for regime change in Tehran and sought to use the global visibility of the World Cup to ensure that the international community could not look away from what happened five months earlier.
Iran’s national team has been entangled with the country’s politics for years, with players themselves sometimes making quiet gestures of solidarity with protesters back home, including notably refusing to sing the national anthem during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The intersection of sports and geopolitics
FIFA’s decision to ban the Lion and Sun flag has itself become a flashpoint. Supporters of the ban argue it keeps political demonstrations out of sporting venues. Critics counter that hosting a team representing a government accused of massacring its own citizens is itself a political act, and that banning symbols of opposition is choosing a side.
The California court’s decision to uphold the ban removed any legal ambiguity, at least within US jurisdiction, but also pushed the energy outside the stadium walls, where protesters are not subject to FIFA’s rules about what flags they can carry or what slogans they can shout.
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