Fifa president Gianni Infantino has opened the door to a 64-team World Cup, saying the idea will be formally examined after the current 2026 tournament – a move that would push the number of participating nations beyond a quarter of Fifa’s 210 men’s international teams.
In an interview with Swiss outlet Bluewin, Infantino confirmed that expanding the competition by a further 16 teams for the 2030 edition is “definitely an issue that will be examined and discussed in the relevant committees after this World Cup.” The first 48-team World Cup, he declared, has been “a huge success” and “100 percent a success,” pointing to the fact that nine out of 10 African teams reached the knockout stages. “At the last World Cup, there were only five teams from Africa,” Infantino said. “That just goes to show how important it is to include all teams.”
“Fifa will consider expanding the World Cup to 64 teams for 2030 after Infantino declared the 48-team format a 'huge success'.”
Infantino framed the potential expansion as a matter of global inclusion. “When organising a World Cup, it’s important to organise it for the whole world – not just Europe and South America – but effectively the entire world,” he said. “Every nation should be allowed to dream of participating in the World Cup.” He added that the quality of teams worldwide is “extremely high and getting higher,” and that excluding smaller countries would remove their “incentive to keep improving.”
The 2030 tournament is already set to be a multi‑continent affair: Spain, Portugal and Morocco will co‑host the bulk of the matches, while Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay will each host one opening game to mark the centenary of the first World Cup, which was staged in Uruguay in 1930. An official proposal to boost that edition to 64 teams was put forward by South American governing body Conmebol in April 2025, but no decision has been reached.
Not everyone is convinced. Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin dismissed the idea as a “bad idea,” while Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa warned it would bring “chaos.” Victor Montagliani, president of Concacaf, said the suggestion “doesn’t feel right” and would damage “the broader football ecosystem.”
Nevertheless, the United States has signalled interest in hosting a 64‑team World Cup in 2038. Andrew Giuliani, executive director of the White House’s World Cup task force, said the US would be able to “handle it.”
With Infantino insisting that “every team played at a high level” in the 48‑team format, the debate now shifts to whether further expansion would dilute quality or give more nations a chance to dream – and whether Fifa’s council will back a proposal that many of the game’s most powerful figures already oppose.