2026 FIFA World Cup
The 2026 FIFA World Cup, marketed as FIFA World Cup 26, will be the 23rd FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international men's soccer championship contested by the national teams of the member associations of FIFA. The tournament will take place from June 11 to July 19, 2026. It will be jointly hosted by sixteen cities—eleven in the United States, three in Mexico, and two in Canada. The tournament will be the first to be hosted by three nations.
This tournament will be the first to include 48 teams, an expansion from 32. The United 2026 bid beat a rival bid by Morocco during a final vote at the 68th FIFA Congress in Moscow. It will be the first men's World Cup since 2002 to be co-hosted by multiple nations. With its past hosting of the 1970 and 1986 tournaments, Mexico will become the first country to host or co-host the men's World Cup three times. The United States previously hosted the men's World Cup in 1994. By contrast, it will be Canada's first time hosting or co-hosting the men's tournament. The event will return to its traditional Northern Hemisphere summer schedule after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was held in November and December.
As the host nations, Canada, Mexico, and the United States all automatically qualified. Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan, and Uzbekistan will all make their World Cup debuts. Argentina is the defending champion, having won its third World Cup title in 2022.
Format and expansion
The general idea of expanding the tournament had been suggested as early as 2013 by then UEFA president Michel Platini, and also in 2016 by FIFA president Gianni Infantino. Opponents of the proposal argued that the number of games played was already at an unacceptable level, that the expansion would dilute the quality of the games, and that the decision was driven by political rather than sporting concerns, accusing Infantino of using the promise of bringing more countries to the World Cup to win his election.Starting with this edition, the FIFA World Cup expanded to 48 teams, an increase of 16 teams compared with the previous seven tournaments. The teams will be split into twelve groups of four teams, with the top two teams in each group and the eight best third-placed teams progressing to a new round of 32, as approved by the FIFA Council on March 14, 2023. This is set to be the first expansion and format change since 1998.
The total number of games played will increase from 64 to 104, and the number of games played by teams reaching the final four will increase from seven to eight. The tournament will last 39 days, an increase from 32 days of the 2014 and 2018 tournaments. Each team will still play three group matches. The final matchday at club level for players named in the final squads is May 24, 2026; clubs have to release their players by May 25, with exceptions granted to players participating in continental club competition finals up until May 30. The 56 days of the combined rest, release, and tournament periods remain identical to the 2010, 2014 and 2018 tournaments.
Previous expansion formats
The expansion to 48 teams had already been approved on January 10, 2017, when it was decided that the tournament would include 16 groups of 3 teams, and 80 matches in total, with the top two teams of each group progressing to a round of 32. Under this later-superseded format, the maximum number of games per team would have remained at seven, but each team would have played one fewer group match than before. The tournament still would have been completed within 32 days. The later-superseded format was chosen over three other proposals, ranging from 40 to 48 teams, from 76 to 88 matches, and from one to four minimum matches per team.Critics of the later-superseded format argued that the use of three-team groups with two teams progressing significantly increased the risk of collusion between teams. This prompted FIFA to suggest that penalty shootouts may be used to prevent draws in the group stage, although even then some risk of collusion would remain, and a possibility would emerge of teams deliberately losing shootouts to eliminate a rival. To address these concerns, FIFA continued considering alternative formats – a process that ended with the 2023 announcement that the format would be 12 groups of 4 teams.
Host selection
The FIFA Council went back and forth between 2013 and 2017 on limitations within hosting rotation based on the continental confederations. Originally, it was set that bids to be host would not be allowed from countries belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments. It was temporarily changed to only prohibit countries belonging to the confederation that hosted the previous World Cup from bidding to host the following tournament, before the rule was changed back to its prior state of two World Cups.The FIFA Council made an exception to potentially grant eligibility to member associations of the confederation of the second-to-last host of the FIFA World Cup in the event that none of the received bids fulfill the strict technical and financial requirements. In March 2017, FIFA president Gianni Infantino confirmed that "Europe and Asia are excluded from the bidding following the selection of Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022 respectively." Therefore, the 2026 World Cup could be hosted by one of the remaining four confederations: CONCACAF, CAF, CONMEBOL, or OFC, or potentially by UEFA in case no bid from those four met the requirements.
Co-hosting the FIFA World Cup—which had been banned by FIFA after the 2002 World Cup—was approved for the 2026 World Cup, though not limited to a specific number but instead evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Also for 2026, the FIFA general secretariat, after consultation with the Competitions Committee, had the power to exclude bidders who did not meet the minimum technical requirements to host the competition.
Canada, Mexico, and the United States had each publicly considered bidding for the tournament separately, but the United joint bid was announced on April 10, 2017. In March 2022, Liga MX president Mikel Arriola claimed Mexico's involvement as cohost could have been at risk if the league and the federation had not responded quickly to the Querétaro–Atlas riot between rival fans that left 26 spectators injured and resulted in 14 arrests. Arriola said FIFA was "shocked" by the incident but Infantino was satisfied with the sanctions handed down against Querétaro.
Voting
The voting took place on June 13, 2018, during the 68th FIFA Congress in Moscow, and it was opened to all 203 eligible members. The United bid won with 134 valid ballots, while the Morocco bid received 65 valid ballots. Iran voted for the option "None of the bids", while Cuba, Slovenia, and Spain abstained from voting. Ghana was suspended by FIFA due to a corruption scandal and was therefore ineligible to vote.| Nation | Vote |
| Nation | Round 1 |
| Canada, Mexico, United States | 134 |
| Morocco | 65 |
| None of the bids | 1 |
| Abstentions | 3 |
| Total votes | 200 |
| Required for majority | 101 |
Venues
During the bidding process, 41 cities with 42 existing, fully functional venues with regular tenants and two venues under construction submitted to be part of the bid. A first-round elimination cut nine venues and nine cities. A second-round elimination cut an additional nine venues in six cities, while three venues in three cities dropped out due to FIFA's unwillingness to discuss financial details. After Montreal dropped out in July 2021 due to lack of provincial funding and support to renovate Olympic Stadium, Vancouver rejoined the bid as a candidate city in April 2022, bringing the total number to 24 venues, each in its own city or metropolitan area.On June 16, 2022, the sixteen host cities were announced by FIFA: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Guadalajara, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Miami, Monterrey, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Toronto, and Vancouver. Eight of the sixteen chosen stadiums have permanent artificial turf surfaces that are planned to be replaced with grass under the direction of FIFA and a University of Tennessee–Michigan State University research team. Four venues are indoor stadiums that use retractable roof systems, all equipped with climate control while a fifth, Los Angeles, is open-air but has a translucent roof and no climate control. The host of the final match—MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey—was announced by FIFA on February 4, 2024.
Although there are soccer-specific stadiums in Canada and the United States, the largest dedicated soccer-specific stadium in the United States, Geodis Park in Nashville, Tennessee, seats 30,000, which falls short of FIFA's minimum of 40,000. Stadiums including Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and Lumen Field in Seattle are used by National Football League and Major League Soccer teams. Although primarily used for gridiron football, with the American stadiums hosting NFL teams and Canada's hosting the Canadian Football League, all of the Canadian and American stadiums have been used on numerous occasions for soccer and are also designed to host that sport.
Mexico City is the only capital of the three host nations chosen as a venue site, with Ottawa and Washington, D.C., joining Bonn and Tokyo as the only capital cities not selected to host World Cup matches. Washington was a host city candidate, but due to the poor state of FedExField, it combined its bid with nearby Baltimore's, which was unsuccessful. Other cities eliminated from the final hosting list were Cincinnati, Denver, Nashville, Orlando, and Edmonton. Ottawa's candidate venue, TD Place Stadium, was eliminated early on due to insufficient capacity. None of the stadiums used in the 1994 FIFA World Cup will be used in this tournament, and Estadio Azteca is the only stadium in this tournament that was used in the 1970 and 1986 FIFA World Cups.
Due to FIFA's rules on stadium sponsorships, the venues will use alternative names for the duration of the tournament, shown in parentheses. The capacity is based on information published by FIFA.
| City | Stadium | Capacity | Image |
double-daggersort|Mexico City| |