They fled war as child refugees, now they’re playing at World Cup 2026

In Vancouver, during the opening week of the 2026 edition of FIFA’s global football showpiece, Nestory Irankunda became the youngest player to score for Australia at a World Cup.

The 20-year-old celebrated the effort in the 2-0 victory against Turkiye by punching the corner flag, his tribute to Australian great Tim Cahill.

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The celebration did not show what came before it: a refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania, where Irankunda was born after his parents fled Burundi’s civil war. Two of his teammates carry a version of that same story onto the same pitch.

Across the largest World Cup staged with 48 nations, hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States, at least nine players carry a refugee or displacement story. Together with others, they were brought together last month by the UN refugee agency under a campaign called the Gamechanging Team.

The UNHCR says 117 million people are displaced worldwide, including almost 49 million children.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Barham Salih, called this World Cup “an ideal moment… to send a message of hope to fans all over the world,” in the same May statement that announced the Gamechanging Team.

For the players who share painfully similar pasts, that message plays out across more than a hundred matches this summer, in front of the largest audience football has ever drawn.

Here are those nine of the players who reached the finals – along with two more who missed out – and where their stories come from.

Alphonso Davies — Canada

Davies was born in 2000 in Buduburam refugee camp, Ghana, after his parents fled Liberia’s civil war; the family resettled in Edmonton, Canada, when he was five. In March 2021 he became the first footballer named a UNHCR Global Goodwill Ambassador. “Whilst the refugee camp provided a safe place for my family when they fled war, I often wonder where I would have been if I had stayed there,” he said in the statement UNHCR released announcing his appointment. “I don’t think I would have made it to where I am today.” Davies now captains Canada, one of three co-host nations alongside Mexico and the US — who qualify automatically.

Mohamed Toure — Australia

Toure was born in a refugee camp in Conakry, Guinea, in 2004, after his family fled an attack on their hometown in Liberia and spent 14 years waiting to be resettled. “Our town was attacked by a group of men and we had to flee,” his father, Amara, told Football Australia’s YouTube channel, in comments reported by ITV News Anglia on June 12, 2026. The family settled in Adelaide, Australia. Now Australia’s starting striker, Toure told Football Australia around the same time: “If my dad can go to work and say: ‘Yeah, my son played at the World Cup’… that makes me happier than me playing in a World Cup”.

Awer Mabil — Australia

Mabil was born in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya, after his South Sudanese parents fled civil war, and was resettled in Adelaide aged ten. He scored the penalty that sent Australia to the 2022 World Cup and co-founded Barefoot to Boots, a charity supplying football gear to children still living in Kakuma. “Everything is possible… so keep going,” he told the Philippine outlet Sunstar during Refugee Week in June 2026.

Nestory Irankunda — Australia

Irankunda was born in a refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania, after his parents fled Burundi’s civil war. “My older sister was sick and they were close to leaving her behind, but my dad couldn’t do it,” he said in an interview this month with beIN Sports describing his family’s escape.

Of his World Cup goal against Türkiye: “It is unreal and a dream come true”.

Ermedin Demirovic — Bosnia and Herzegovina

Demirovic was born in Germany, where his father settled after fleeing Bosnia during the Balkan war. He chose to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina rather than Germany. “To now represent Bosnia and Herzegovina at only its second-ever World Cup makes me incredibly proud,” he said in the statement UNHCR released in May launching its Gamechanging Team campaign.

Asmir Begovic — Bosnia and Herzegovina

Begovic fled Bosnia at four, first to Germany, then to Canada, where he learned the game.

He played at Bosnia’s first World Cup in 2014 and remains part of the squad for its second. “I get flashbacks every once in a while travelling in the car,” he said in a 2022 interview with Goal.com. “Nobody felt sorry for us, and you couldn’t feel sorry for yourself.”

Antonio Rudiger — Germany

Rudiger was born in Berlin – not in a camp, but to a mother who fled Sierra Leone’s civil war in 1991 and settled in Neukolln, a district he described in a 2020 interview on Chelsea FC’s official site as “a tough area where mostly refugees grew up.”

“My parents came to Germany from Sierra Leone to seek safety and a better future,” he said in the same UNHCR statement that introduced the Gamechanging Team in May. “Representing Germany is a full circle moment for me.”

Ali Al-Hamadi — Iraq

Al-Hamadi was a baby when his family fled Iraq in 2003, spurred by the jailing of his father for joining a peaceful protest against Saddam Hussein.

Upon the release of his father, who was studying to be a lawyer at the time, the family fled to the United Kingdom.

Iraq qualified for its first World Cup in roughly four decades this year, and Al-Hamadi made the squad. “It’s not just my father, it’s my mother,” he told the BBC, in an interview republished this month. “For a young woman to carry me… and have to leave her home country… was really damaging.”

Eduardo Camavinga — France

Camavinga was born in a refugee camp in Angola after his parents fled war in DR Congo. Ahead of the 2022 Champions League final, he said, in a statement released through UNHCR: “I was born in a refugee camp in Angola after my family fled war… I’m grateful to play, and proud to do so, as a former refugee”.

Bernard Kamungo — United States

Kamungo was born near a refugee camp in Tanzania after his family fled DR Congo.

He debuted for the US national team in 2024 but was not included on the final 26-man World Cup roster this summer.

Victor Moses — Nigeria

Moses’s story is the heaviest of the eleven, and the only one without an active World Cup campaign behind it — Nigeria did not qualify. At eleven, his missionary parents were killed in religious violence in Kaduna, Nigeria, in 2002; he fled to the UK alone as an unaccompanied child and was raised by a foster family. He went on to win the Premier League with Chelsea and play for Nigeria at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.