A poster shared on social media that requests attendees to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar to avoid dating and drinking alcohol is not an official event poster and includes false information, the country’s organizing committee has told Reuters.

Presented in English and Arabic, the poster asks ticketholders to “reflect your respect to the religion and culture of Qatari people by avoiding these [eight] behaviours” (here) , (here) and (here).

They are: “Drinking alcohol, homosexuality, immodesty, profanity, not respecting places of worship, loud music and sounds, dating, and taking people’s pictures without their permission.”

Some social media users resharing the image appear to believe it communicates official rules of the event, though Qatar’s world cup organizers, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, told Reuters that this is not the case.

“The ‘Qatar Welcomes You’ graphic circulating on social media is not from an official source and contains factually incorrect information,” a committee spokesperson said via email.

“We strongly urge fans and visitors to rely solely on official sources from tournament organisers for travel advice for this year’s FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™️. The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, FIFA World Cup 2022 (Q22) and FIFA will shortly be issuing an extensive fan guide that disputes a lot of the information being circulated.”

The poster can be traced back to a Qatari citizen group called “Reflect Your Respect” (here), which was launched in 2014 to remind foreigners to respect the country’s conservative customs, according to Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq (bit.ly/3fBBUMr).

Reuters has reached out to FIFA and Reflect Your Respect for comment.

VERDICT

Missing context. The poster is not an official release by World Cup organizers. An official “extensive fan guide” is due to be released at a later date.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.