How would a 64-team World Cup work?

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Cesar Hernandez Sep 27, 2026, 07:24 AM ET

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A year before the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off with a record 48 participants, those in charge of the sport were already dreaming about how the tournament could expand even further.

In March 2025, the idea of once again increasing the size of the competition -- which was at just 24 teams in the mid-1990s -- was proposed by South American confederation CONMEBOL for 2030. By 2026, FIFA president Gianni Infantino didn't shy away from a possible expansion to 64 teams, stating: "When you organize a World Cup, it's important that you organize it for the whole world. It's not just Europe and South America, but the entire world."

There is no confirmation that FIFA will expand back-to-back tournaments. Nonetheless, there's little doubt that the idea has gained steam when considering that the president of CONMEBOL himself posted this summer that there will be a "64-team tournament" for 2030.

If 2026 was a gargantuan task that needed the work of three different countries to accommodate 48 teams, how exactly can anybody manage 64? Here's how it could play out in 2030 across Morocco, Portugal and Spain.

Format and duration

First things first: the group stage. This is a simple exercise with 64 teams, which would allow 16 groups of four. As opposed to the awkward scenario in 2026 that had the best third-place teams qualifying for the knockout stage, FIFA could go back to the previous format of having the top two teams from each group qualify for the 32-team knockouts.

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But here's the tricky part: With more teams in the group stage, that means more matches in total. Instead of 72 group stage games in 2026, that number of group stage matches would increase to 96 in a 64-team tournament. With an average of 4.2 group games per day in the last World Cup, the group stage lasted 17 days. Using that same mark of 4.2 group games per day, that would mean that the 2030 World Cup group stage would last nearly 23 days.

With 32 teams once again in the knockouts, the scheduling would remain the same in those rounds, but with six added days to the tournament due to the group stage, the full 2030 competition could be increased to 45 days -- that's more than six weeks. This might not seem much to casual fans, but the overall soccer schedule was already packed in 2026 with a tournament that lasted five-and-a-half weeks.

"Increasing the number of national teams makes no sense," LaLiga president Javier Tebas said in July. "Not everything can revolve around the World Cup ... they are destroying the football industry."

So could you condense the group stage? Sure, but it's not ideal.

If we squeeze those 96 group stage games into the same 17-day window from 2026, that's roughly 5.6 group stage games per day. With at least an hour break in between games, it would be a nightmare to schedule matches that would go into odd hours during six-game days. Playing multiple games at the same time, which happens during the final round of group stage clashes, could solve this for the first two matchdays, but that would mean teams missing out on the spotlight, broadcasters missing out on revenue and fans, well, just missing out.

Setting the field and what it would mean for qualifying

With more spots given, how exactly would they be allocated?

Let's use the current percentage of the spots allocated per confederation for the 48-team 2026 World Cup. For the sake of keeping things more streamlined, we'll give the two playoff spots that the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the Confederation of African Football (CAF) earned for the recent tournament.

Forty-eight teams contested the 2026 World Cup, but could we see 64 competing in 2030?Jordan Bank - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images

Using those percentages as an approximation, and leaving four of the 64 spots up for grabs in an expected playoff for the final spots for 2030, the allocation of teams from 2026 to 2030 could look like this.

UEFA: 20, up from 16 CAF: 12, up from 10 AFC: 11, up from 9 CONMEBOL: 7, up from 6 Concacaf: 8, up from 6 OFC: 2, up from 1

There are some slight adjustments that could be made when looking at the percentages, especially when considering that CONMEBOL makes a smaller jump than others, but with only 10 teams in their confederation, you might not find many in South America that are bothered with seven qualification spots.

No matter how you chop and change the numbers, though, there is a question to be asked about how this would impact World Cup qualifying. More spots would mean less jeopardy in those battles for invites, making those games not nearly as appealing in regional competitions leading up to the World Cup.

To quote UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin in April 2025: "It's not a good idea for our qualifiers."

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There are also some obvious economic impacts that could lead to fans not thinking twice about regional games leading up to the World Cup, and instead focusing more on the major tournament itself. The commercial value of those qualifiers wouldn't be as important for broadcasters and sponsors, and in turn, it would make confederations and national teams even more dependent on FIFA's main event.

In North America, it's also difficult to imagine that Concacaf would return to a final group of eight vying for places when eight invitations could be available. Breaking up the confederation's qualifying campaign into separate groups make more sense, and given possible seeding with powerhouses leading each subset, could this also spell the end of high-profile qualifiers between Mexico, the United States and Canada on the way to the next World Cup?

Player welfare and tournament quality

One of the beauties of soccer is that there's a never-ending supply of matches at the international and club level. Aside from short breaks in the summer and winter, there's nearly always a decent-quality match that's available on most days of the week. And believe it or not, that is an issue.

There's no lack of reporting of elite players being open about how exhausted they feel. FIFPRO, the organization that is part of players' unions, have been open about the workload of professionals.

"Regretfully, FIFA has consistently refused to include national leagues and player unions in its decision-making process," FIFPRO said to ESPN in a 2024 statement. "FIFA decisions over the last years have repeatedly favoured its own competitions and commercial interests, neglected its responsibilities as a governing body, and harmed the economic interests of national leagues and the welfare of players."

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters told the European Leagues General Assembly two years ago that world soccer was approaching a tipping point. "The feedback we have from players is that there is too much football being played and there is constant expansion," he said.

Video 1 It stands to reason, then, that taking what had historically (prior to 1998) been a month=long celebration of the sport and turning it into a six-plus-week extravaganza will have consequences for the very athletes whose talents make it the must-see event that it always is.

"I don't believe expanding the men's World Cup to 64 teams is the right move for the tournament itself and the broader football ecosystem, from national teams to club competitions, leagues and players," Concacaf president Victor Montagliani said in April 2025.

Tired players aside, would more teams and an expanded competition diminish the quality of the World Cup? That's a different argument and perhaps a separate investigation altogether. Cape Verde, the 69th-best team in the world, according to FIFA's rankings, made it into the knockout round in 2026, as did No. 74 Ghana.

Would that continue with more teams from further down the order participating?

"If the issue remains open to change, then the door will not only be open to expanding the tournament to 64 teams," AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa said last year, "but someone might come along and demand raising the number to 132 teams. Where would we end up then? It would become chaos."

Stadiums needed for an ever-expanding competition

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In the 2026 World Cup, there were 16 venues that hosted 104 games. That's 6.5 games per venue, with a tournament-most nine matches played at the Dallas Cowboys' AT&T Stadium.

A full 64-team World Cup would have 128 games, so if we're using that metric of 6.5 games per venue, that means Morocco-Portugal-Spain would need 19 stadiums. That math will need to be adjusted to account for FIFA awarding one match each to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay to celebrate the tournament's centenary.

No sites or stadiums have been finalized, but 23 have been proposed across the six countries. That's quite the leap from 1994, when games were played in just nine venues.

Putting aside the travel concerns of select teams crossing the Atlantic in the middle of the group stage, with a 64-team tournament requiring a significant number of stadiums, it would only make sense to not limit those three South American countries to a single match each but instead award the region a full group.

And that leads us to some final questions: Going forward, which nations would be equipped to host a World Cup of this size? In 2034, how would Saudi Arabia accommodate 64 teams without a co-host? Would a 64-team tournament make co-hosting mandatory?

Coupled with accommodations and training facilities, serious infrastructure is needed, and let's not forget the size of the venues either. In 2026's 16 stadiums across three countries, capacities ranged from 45,000 to 80,000 for 104 games primarily hosted in the U.S. at NFL stadiums, making FIFA billions.

It's no easy task hosting a World Cup, and if it expands, FIFA might be looking at a limited amount of host opportunities going forward. Does that make a return to the U.S. inevitable in 2038?