2030 World Cup finals to be a truly global affair
The tournament will be played in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay
The 2030 World Cup, which will mark the tournament’s centennial, will be contested on three continents after Morocco, Portugal and Spain won the race to host the 48-team tournament with help from three South American nations, FIFA said on Wednesday.
As part of the celebrations, Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay will host the opening three matches.
“As a result, a celebration will take place in South America and three South American countries — Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay — will organize one match each of the FIFA World Cup 2030,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino. “The first of these three matches will of course be played at the stadium where it all began, in Montevideo’s mythical Estadio Centenario, precisely to celebrate the centenary edition of the FIFA World Cup.”
The inaugural World Cup, played in 1930, was hosted and won by Uruguay.
The announcement — made during a virtual meeting of the FIFA Council on Wednesday — will need to be confirmed in a vote by the governing body’s 211 members.
All six nations would automatically qualify for the tournament as hosts.
“In a divided world, FIFA and football are uniting,” Infantino said. “The FIFA Council, representing the entire world of football, unanimously agreed to celebrate the centenary of the FIFA World Cup, whose first edition was played in Uruguay in 1930, in the most appropriate way.”
The Morocco, Spain and Portugal bid is a collaboration between UEFA and CAF, which originally had included Ukraine as a gesture of solidarity given the ongoing war with Russia. Ukraine was later removed from the joint bid.
Rival bids had been expected from South America, where Uruguay and Argentina, alongside Chile and Paraguay, were expected to team up. A third cross-continental bid, uniting Greece with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, had also been in the mix.
The FIFA Council also agreed “that in line with the principle of confederation rotation and of securing the best possible hosting conditions for the tournaments, the bidding processes for both the 2030 and 2034 editions be conducted concurrently.”
FIFA added that member associations from Asia and Oceania are “invited to bid to host the FIFA World Cup 2034.”
The 2026 World Cup, the first to feature 48 teams, will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. Last year’s World Cup in Qatar was the last to feature 32 finalists.