Saudi Arabia has been officially confirmed as the host nation of the 2034 men’s World Cup.
Following an extraordinary FIFA Congress meeting on Wednesday, world football’s governing body has also confirmed that the 2030 World Cup will be held across six nations —Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay — in three continents.
Both bids were unopposed, with each proposal finalised in October 2023.
How will the 2030 World Cup work?
For the first time in World Cup history, the 2030 tournament will be held across multiple continents.
The first match will be played in Montevideo, Uruguay, to celebrate the city which hosted the first World Cup in 1930. The second and third games will be held in Argentina and Paraguay respectively.
Uruguay hosted and won the inaugural World Cup in 1930 and Argentina were the beaten finalists, while the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) headquarters are based in Paraguay. CONMEBOL was the only confederation in existence at the time of the 1930 tournament. The remaining matches will be held across Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
World Cup matches have never previously been staged in Portugal, Paraguay or Morocco — which will become the first north African nation to host tournament matches. Spain will host its first tournament matches since 1982.
Montevideo, Asuncion and Buenos Aires — the respective capitals of Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina — will start the tournament. Six Moroccan cities (Agadir, Casablanca, Fes, Marrakech, Rabat, Tangier), two from Portugal (Lisbon, Porto) and nine from Spain (A Coruna, Barcelona, Bilbao, Las Palmas, Madrid, Malaga, San Sebastian, Seville, Zaragoza) will also host matches.
Why was Saudi Arabia’s 2034 bid unopposed?
In October 2023, FIFA announced Saudi Arabia was the sole candidate to host the 2034 tournament after Australia decided not to bid.
The Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF) had made public its interest in hosting the 2034 competition earlier that month, saying that it aimed to deliver a “world-class tournament” in the 25th edition, and said its bid would draw inspiration from the country’s “deep-rooted passion for football”.
The 2034 World Cup had been guaranteed to take place in a country in the Asian confederation, of which Saudi Arabia and Australia are both members, or the Oceania Football Confederation, due to the locations of the 2026 and 2030 editions.
The 2026 World Cup will be hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico while the 2030 version will be hosted across three continents (Africa, Europe and South America) and six nations.
Due to FIFA’s principle of confederation rotation, this ruled out these four continents and in the absence of a bid from Oceania, signalled a return to Asia where Qatar hosted the 2022 World Cup.
Australia had “explored the opportunity” of bidding for the tournament but confirmed ahead of October’s deadline for declarations it would not be doing so.
Saudi Arabia strengthens standing in soccer despite concerns
Saudi Arabia has invested significantly in football in recent years, most notably in 2022 as its Public Investment Fund (PIF) took control of four domestic teams — Al Ahli, Al Hilal, Al Ittihad and Al Nassr — in the Saudi Pro League (SPL). A series of high-profile players moved from Europe to the Middle Eastern nation, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Karim Benzema.
Benzema joined Al Ittihad in 2023 (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
Last month, FIFA’s evaluation report for Saudi Arabia’s bid declared the risk assessment for human rights to be “medium” and judged there to be “good potential” for the competition to act as a “catalyst” for reforms within the nation. The human rights organisation Amnesty International, though, described FIFA’s observations as “an astonishing whitewash” of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.
FIFA’s bid report also declared the proposal by Saudi Arabia — a nation which possesses around 17 per cent of the world’s petroleum reserves, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries — to have demonstrated a “good commitment to sustainability”, while acknowledging that the bid presents an “elevated risk” in terms of timing due to the climate of the country.
Similar concerns were voiced over the 2022 World Cup, which was held in the neighbouring state of Qatar. Despite initially stating that the World Cup could be held in the summer as is traditional, the Qatar tournament was pushed back to November and December of 2022 due to fears of the impact of the heat on fans and players. If the Saudi Arabia World Cup is also moved due to those concerns, it would likely have to be brought forward to January and February of 2034, due to Ramadan — the Muslim holy month of fasting and prayer — falling in November and December of 2033 and 2034.
Criticisms of FIFA
Research by Carbon Market Watch before the 2022 World Cup called FIFA’s target “misleading” and advertising complaints were lodged in five countries against FIFA’s branding of the tournament.
In June 2023, FIFA was found to have breached Swiss Federal Law on Unfair Competition by advertising the 2022 Qatar World Cup as “carbon-neutral”.
FIFA was found to have been unable to conclusively verify the carbon neutrality of the 2022 World Cup through its calculation methods and created a misleading impression that carbon neutrality had already been achieved before the tournament. The 2022 World Cup’s C02 emissions and offset could only be conclusively judged post-tournament.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino at the 2022 World Cup final (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
FIFA’s decision to host the 2030 World Cup in three continents has been criticised due to the increased carbon footprint of long travelling distances, which would negate the governing body’s carbon-neutral plans. Football for Future, a non-profit organisation that aims to create an environmentally sustainable culture in the sport, said last year the tournament proposal was an example of football’s “inability to take the threat of climate change seriously”.
Among the critics of the 2030 tournament format is former FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who called the multi-continental approach “absurd” and said it would mean the World Cup would lose its identity.
In October, 11 leading human rights organisations criticised leading global law firm Clifford Chance, whose Saudi operation produced a 39-page document published by FIFA, which the organisations claimed represented a “flawed” assessment of Saudi Arabia.
The 11 organisations — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, a Saudi Arabian diaspora organisation and human rights groups specialising in the Gulf region — raised major concerns about the credibility of a report entitled “Independent Context Assessment Prepared for the Saudi Arabian Football Federation in relation to the FIFA World Cup 2034”, which formed a key part of Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the tournament.
Earlier this week, the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) criticised the bidding processes for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups, which it said are “flawed and inconsistent with the principles of FIFA’s reforms.” In a formal letter to FIFA, the NFF has demanded “greater transparency, fairness, and stricter adherence to FIFA’s 2016 reforms” which relate to “good governance and transparent World Cup allocations”.
A continuation of Saudi investment in sport
Saudi Arabia’s PIF has also invested significantly in other sports in recent years.
PIF owns the LIV golf series and is hopeful about its proposed merger with the PGA Tour.
PIF has already committed as much as $100million to tennis sponsorships of the men’s rankings and multiple tournaments, agreeing in February to a five-year partnership that includes naming rights for the ATP rankings.
Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh will host the WTA Finals for the top eight singles players and top eight doubles teams for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 tournaments, in an ongoing battle to control tennis.
Saudi Arabia is also becoming a home for elite boxing, with Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder, Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk among the names to have fought in Riyadh in recent years.
Saudi Arabia’s move into boxing has been led by Turki Al-Sheikh, chair of the General Entertainment Authority, who has become one of the most influential figures in the sport. Al-Sheikh has been the owner of the Spanish soccer club Almeria since 2019.
(Top photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)
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