The expanded 2026 World Cup will feature four-team groups and 104 games in total, according to Matt Slater and David Ornstein of The Athletic.
FIFA is set to formally approve and announce the format for the supersized event during a council meeting Tuesday in Kigali, Rwanda. The men’s World Cup has been a 64-game tournament since 1998.
The tournament, co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is expected to take place over 39 days, Slater and Ornstein add. Already the largest World Cup in history with its expansion from 32 to 48 participating nations, it will now also be the longest ever.
FIFA initially planned to use 16 three-team groups, with the top two nations from each section advancing to a 32-team knockout round. Under that format, the tournament would’ve featured 80 matches in total.
But concerns over the original 2026 plans forced FIFA to rethink its approach, particularly after the final set of matches in the existing four-team group format at the recent edition in Qatar generated consistent drama and excitement.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino confirmed in Qatar that the governing body was considering altering the 2026 format that it had previously green-lit in 2017.
Using groups consisting of just three teams would eliminate the simultaneous group finales, a popular World Cup feature, and would create an opportunity for two teams to collude if they both needed a specific result in their last group match, just as West Germany and Austria did in the infamous 1982 match dubbed the “Disgrace of Gijon.”
With 48 teams split into quartets, the eight best third-place finishers will join the top two teams from each group in the knockout stage.
To facilitate the inclusion of extra games without making sweeping alterations to the schedule, FIFA will reduce the pre-tournament preparation period from 23 to 16 days, according to Slater and Ornstein.
It’s unclear how the allocation of matches between the three host countries will be adjusted; the United States was set to stage 60 games under the previous format, with Canada and Mexico handed 10 each.
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