May 11 – FIFA’s Congress ratified the decision of the FIFA Council to open up the bidding for the 2026 World Cup and give member associations from CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL and the OFC time to express their interest in hosting the tournament. The deadline for submissions is August 17.
The overwhelming favourites for the 2026 World Cup hosting remain the joint North American bid of the US, Mexico and Canada that would see a similarly overwhelming bulk of the games played in the US, probably including all the rounds after the group stages. Their request to circumvent the bid process and have the pre-approval of their own bid put before the full FIFA Congress has earlier in the week been turned down by the FIFA Council.
The decision on awarding the 2026 hosting will be made at the 68th FIFA Congress, in Moscow on 13 June 2017, before the kick off the 2018 event. A little ironic that the US will likely get to celebrate a great political triumph on Russian soil – doubtless Agent Trump will approve, perhaps even attend the party himself as Russian president Vladimir Putin did in 2010 when Russia won the hosting rights for 2018.
With Asia and Europe not allowed to bid for the hosting rights to 2026, the only real challenge to the North Americans could come from Morocco who would need to buddy up with another African federation to meet the hosting criteria for a 48-team World Cup.
A set of principles that need to fulfilled by bidding nations has been approved by the congress but the full detail of the bid requirements will not be available to bidders until after they have registered. The detail that is known is that it will include: “Stadium and infrastructure requirements; principles of sustainable event management, human rights and environmental protection; and details on aspects such as governmental support documents, the organisational model to be adopted and provisions for the establishment of a legacy fund,” according to a FIFA press release.
A crucial detail that has occupied much talk on 2026 so far has been the allocation of final qualification slots which will be: AFC (Asia): 8.5 slots, CAF (Africa) 9.5 slots, CONCACAF (North America, central America and the Caribbean) 6.5 slots, CONMEBOL (South America) 6.5 slots, OFC (Oceania) 1.5 slots, UEFA (Europe) 16 slots.
The host country will automatically qualify taking one slot from their confederation allowance. If there is co-hosting the number of automatic qualifications is decided by the FIFA Council. In the North American case this would reduce their allocation to 3.5 qualification slots if all three nations were given slots. On the FIFA Council Canada and the US both have representation – Victor Montagliani (CONCACAF president from Canada) and US Soccer Association president Sunil Gulati occupy two of the confederation’s five seats at Council. It looks like there will be more political horse-trading to come on this issue.
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