Spain, Portugal & Morocco set to host FIFA World Cup 2030

2026 FIFA World Cup will be held in the USA and Canada

Morocco, Portugal, and Spain secured the bid to organise the 48-team competition, the 2030 World Cup will be contested by three nations. Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay will get the honour of hosting the first three games.

Even seasoned Fifa viewers may be taken aback by the choice. Teams competing in the 2030 World Cup will represent six nations, all of which will automatically qualify. There wasn't ever a single country represented in the competition.

The choice was reached on Wednesday during an online conversation with the Fifa council. In the latter months of next year, a vote including all 211 Fifa members will be required to affirm it.

The announcement comes after months of rumours about where the competition would take place and political squabbling among continental confederations over who should get to host.

The African federation, CAF, and UEFA collaborated on the Morocco, Spain, and Portugal bid, and Ukraine was contemplating serving as the host as a show of support in the midst of the ongoing crisis. It is acknowledged that the Ukraine element was excluded from the winning proposal.

Competing bids were anticipated from South America, where Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay were anticipated to join forces, as well as from another cross-continental offer that would have partnered Greece with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The 2034 World Cup is going to be held in a host nation (or nations) that have been chosen by the Asian or Oceania confederations as a result of the decision made on Wednesday.

This effectively suggests that Saudi Arabia will probably make a bid and that it is likely to be the frontrunner to succeed. Australia is expected to submit a bid, maybe with Indonesia, the fourth-most populous nation in the world. China, which had already set its eyes on staging the World Cup by 2030, would also be interested.

“In a divided world, Fifa and football are uniting,” said Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino. “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.

As a result, a celebration will take place in South America and three South American countries – Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay – will organise one match each of the Fifa World Cup 2030. The first of these three matches will of course be played at the stadium where it all began, in Montevideo’s mythical Estádio Centenário, precisely to celebrate the centenary edition of the Fifa World Cup.”