FIFA is set to approve an expansion of the men’s World Cup with 40 more matches from the 2026 tournament in North America.
The decision to grow from 64 to 104 matches – rather than the 80 originally planned in 2026 – is due to come at a meeting of the governing body’s ruling council in Kigali, Rwanda.
Adding matches helps FIFA chase its target of more than £9bn in revenue but it also solves format issues for the event being co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.
FIFA had already agreed to enlarge the tournament from 32 to 48 teams.
Rather than having 16 groups each featuring three teams, FIFA will have 12 groups each with four countries, sources say.
The combined number of rest, release and tournament days remains the same as previous World Cups in 2010, 2014 and 2018 – 56 days.
The top two teams will advance to a round of 32 with the eight best third-placed teams.
It means teams reaching the final will now have to play eight matches, rather than the seven played by Qatar 2022 finalists Argentina and France.
The final in the United States is due to be on Sunday July 19, 2026.
Why FIFA had a ‘rethink’ over World Cup format
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Sky Sports News chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol:
“FIFA had a problem because this is going to be the first World Cup with 48 teams so they were trying to work out how it was going to be organised.
“It was going to be 16 groups of three teams and you could have had the situation where two teams would have only played two games before being knocked out and going home.
“FIFA had a rethink, which was accelerated by the World Cup in Qatar. FIFA thought the Qatar World Cup was exciting, there was so much jeopardy and so much at stake.
“That’s why they have had a look at it again and at this FIFA Council meeting in Rwanda, it is going to be officially approved.
“A lot of traditionalists will say they are unhappy with 48 teams because it is too many teams and the quality is going to suffer. It is also bad for the environment having more teams flying around Mexico, Canada and the USA.
“The other argument, though, is that FIFA is made of 211 different countries and of those countries only 78 have ever played in the World Cup so they have been lobbying FIFA to say they need to have a chance to play in the World Cup otherwise their standards of football aren’t going to improve.
“If you look at the slot allocation, at the World Cup in Qatar we only had five countries from Africa even though there are 54 African countries that are members of FIFA.
“Their slot allocation is going to go up from five to nine, there are now going to be eight teams from Asia, six teams from Concacaf so if you take off your blinkers and look at football not just from a western European perspective, the rest of the world – well, the people I speak to – do like that the World Cup will be expanded and it really will be the World Cup.”
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