FIFA approved further expansion of North America’s 2026 World Cup on Tuesday, adding 24 more games to what was already planned to be the longest tournament in the event’s history.
FIFA had already planned to expand from the 32-team format that has been in place since 1998. Preliminary conversations had considered splitting the expanded 48-team field into 16 groups of three — a format that would have required 80 total games, up from 64 in the existing format — but FIFA reconsidered, choosing to go with 12 groups of four teams and 104 total games.
“The revised format mitigates the risk of collusion and ensures that all the teams play a minimum of three matches, while providing balanced rest time between competing teams,” FIFA said in a release outlining the new format.
The further expansion does not come without controversy, because it means the tournament could run for 40 days, compared with the 28 days of the Qatar competition. That would contribute to an already heavy schedule for the game’s top stars. The sport’s smaller nations have welcomed expansion, hoping to make the kind of underdog run
. A larger tournament also means added billions in revenue, even as some have claimed the quality of the event will be diminished.Victor Montagliani, the president of Concacaf, the North American confederation, recently expressed concern about an already crammed soccer calendar. One solution might be a shorter warmup period, although not as short as Qatar’s seven-day lead-up, which was truncated because last year’s event was held in the fall during the sport’s club season.
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