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The 2030 World Cup could have twice as many teams as the tournament’s most recent iteration did—if the South American soccer governing body gets its way.
On Thursday the president of CONMEBOL officially proposed expanding the tournament hosted by Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina to include 64 teams. The 2022 World Cup hosted by Qatar featured 32 teams, while next year’s event hosted by the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will feature 48 teams for the first time.
“We are convinced that the centennial celebration will be unique, because 100 years only happen once,” president Alejandro Dominguez said at the CONMEBOL Congress.
“And that’s why we are proposing, for the only time, to hold this anniversary with 64 teams, on three continents simultaneously. So that all countries have the opportunity to live a global experience, and so that no one on this planet is left out of this celebration which, even though it’s played everywhere, is our party.”
FIFA has already said it would consider the 64-team format after a delegate from Uruguay, which will host one game in the tournament, suggested the idea in March. Uruguay hosted the first World Cup in 1930.
Raising the number of teams would also increase the number of matches. Each tournament from 1998 to 2022 featured 64 matches, which will grow to 104 matches in 2026. A 64-team tournament would mean 128 matches.
All this expansion is happening against the backdrop of conversations about increases to the international calendar. The Champions League also added four clubs and 64 more matches this season. FIFA expanded this summer’s 2025 Club World Cup from seven teams to 32. Players including 2024 Ballon d’Or winner Rodri have called out their increasingly busier schedules, and FIFPro, the global players’ union, and European Leagues, an umbrella organization of the leading European domestic competitions, filed a complaint against FIFA, claiming the organization violates European Union competition law.
CONMEBOL would like to widen the World Cup because it would guarantee all of its 10 member countries an automatic spot in the tournament. But while three of its countries are serving as hosts, each of them only gets one match—the rest of the tournament will be played in Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. That might give UEFA, whose president Aleksander Čeferin has already called the 64-team format “a bad idea,” more negotiating power than CONMEBOL.
But between the 2025 Club World Cup and 2026 World Cup, FIFA has clearly shown it likes expanding tournaments. When faced with criticism about overloading the international calendar, FIFA has argued its schedules received unanimous approval, and pointed a finger back at domestic leagues. “Some leagues in Europe—themselves competition organisers and regulators—are acting with commercial self-interest, hypocrisy, and without consideration to everyone else in the world,” the global body said in a statement in July.
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