The 24th edition of the FIFA World Cup will mark the 100th anniversary of the tournament, which first took place in Uruguay in 1930. That inaugural event featured only 13 participating teams and was won by the host nation, Uruguay. Given the massive scale and logistics of the modern tournament, returning entirely to Uruguay to celebrate the centenary was not a feasible option.

The 2030 World Cup will more closely resemble the 2026 edition than the original 1930 competition. It will feature 48 teams divided into 12 groups of four, followed by a round of 32 after the group stage. Similar to 2026, it will be spread across multiple host nations.

Four years after the first tournament to be jointly hosted by three countries, the 2030 edition will break new ground as the first to be played across three different continents.

The proposed main hosts for the 2030 FIFA World Cup are Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. A total of 20 stadiums across 17 cities in these three nations have been designated as venues—11 in Spain, six in Morocco, and three in Portugal.

Key cities like Barcelona (Camp Nou and RCDE Stadium), Madrid (Santiago Bernabéu and Metropolitano), and Lisbon (Estádio da Luz and Estádio José Alvalade) will each feature two World Cup stadiums.

Of the 104 matches scheduled for the 2030 World Cup, 101 will take place across these 20 venues. The remaining three fixtures will be held in three South American nations—Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay—making the 2030 tournament the first ever to involve six host countries.

These special centenary matches are set to be played at Estadio Centenario in Montevideo, Uruguay; Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Estadio Osvaldo Domínguez Dibb in Asunción, Paraguay.

As a result of this multi-nation hosting plan, the first six teams to qualify for the 2030 FIFA World Cup are already known. All six host nations—including those staging only a single match—will automatically qualify for the tournament.

Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay joined the hosting bid to honour the centenary of the first World Cup held in Uruguay in 1930. Argentina, a neighbouring country, had finished runners-up in that inaugural final against Uruguay.

CONMEBOL, the South American football confederation representing these three nations, had earlier proposed a one-off expansion of the tournament to 64 teams to celebrate the centenary of the first World Cup.

FIFA officially announced Spain, Portugal, and Morocco as the primary co-hosts of the 2030 World Cup in December 2024. During the same announcement, Saudi Arabia was confirmed as the host nation for the 2034 edition.

It has been suggested that the inclusion of three matches in South America in 2030 may have effectively ruled out CONMEBOL nations from submitting a competitive bid for the 2034 tournament.

According to FIFA’s rotation policy, host confederations alternate between editions, and nations from the previous two hosting confederations are not allowed to host the next tournament. With the 2026 and 2030 World Cups involving countries from CONCACAF, UEFA, CAF, and CONMEBOL, these regions will be ineligible to host the 2034 edition.

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