May 22 – FIFA has confirmed its special Club World Cup transfer window has been approved by the 20 member federations that have teams in the 32-team tournament that kicks off June 14 in the US.
The special 10-day window (June 1 -10) means that teams will be allowed to sign new players for the tournament. Closing on June 10, the European summer transfer window will open fully June 16 and close September 1.
This, for example, will enable Real Madrid complete the transfer and bring in Liverpool’s Trent Alexander Arnold into their Club World Cup squad.
Clubs competing at the Club World Cup will also be allowed to bring in newly signed players after the group stage “in a restricted in-competition period from 27 June to 3 July 2025”.
The transfer window manoeuvring does give the clubs the ability to adjust their playing squads with their new domestic seasons in mind but it does give the Club World Cup the feeling of being a pre-season kick about (albeit a fantastically well paid one) as players are tried and tested in a process of bedding them in.
These transfer windows will be available to all clubs in their domestic leagues, not just to clubs participating at the Club World Cup.
FIFA said the windows have been created to “address technicalities and equalise differences in registration periods and domestic-season timings between participating clubs to the greatest extent possible, while affording flexibility to the Member Associations in question… The objective is to encourage clubs and players whose contracts are expiring to find an appropriate solution to facilitate the players’ participation. This will ensure that the best players will be playing, allowing clubs to add new recruits even during the tournament.”
The 20 national associations the window applies to are: Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea Republic, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
The Club World Cup is also putting an interesting spin on the on-going club vs country debate, with FIFA saying that clubs will not be mandated to release players for any national team competitions, but can keep those players for their CWC squads. With only a year to go before the 2026 World Cup for a number of players this period would have been the last chance to secure a spot in their national teams for 2026.
The USA team is perhaps the best example of players who will be missing from the country’s last competitive tournament – the 2025 Gold Cup – before the 2026 World Cup kicks off. Juventus are holding on to Weston McKennie and Yunus Musah, while Borussia Dortmund are keeping Gio Reyna.
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