FIFA is considering expanding the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams. The 2026 edition had only just grown from 32 to 48, which was plainly an encouraging start but not, in the circumstances, a reason to relax.
The proposal is being examined, rather than adopted. Football has not yet been handed a 128-match international festival across six host countries. It is merely standing outside the office while FIFA looks for a larger room.
South American football officials formally proposed the idea as part of the 2030 centenary. One hundred years after the first World Cup in Uruguay, the tournament could return with 64 teams, 16 groups and enough lanyards to threaten the global supply of laminated plastic.
Gianni Infantino said the possibility would be studied after the 2026 World Cup. FIFA has therefore done what any responsible sporting body would do after expanding a competition: considered whether it can be expanded before anyone has had time to find the exit.
The 2026 tournament already contained 104 matches, up from 64 in Qatar. The 2030 event is scheduled across Spain, Portugal and Morocco, with centenary matches in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. It is a tournament with six hosts, three continents and a travel plan that appears to have been prepared by a man trying to win an argument with an atlas.
Supporters of 64 teams point out that the centenary comes only once. This is true. So do most sensible limits, although football has lately treated them as historical curiosities, like a referee who once enforced six seconds for a goalkeeper.
The practical appeal is obvious. More countries could qualify. More supporters could attend. More players could experience the special joy of being eliminated on a Tuesday afternoon in a city they had previously associated with a connecting flight.
The commercial appeal has been less shy. More teams generally produce more matches, and more matches produce more broadcast inventory, sponsorship opportunities and conversations in which an executive says the word â€Ëœecosystem’ while looking at a spreadsheet with unusual tenderness.
FIFA says expansion is about opportunity. This is a pleasant word. It suggests children kicking a ball in a field. It also suggests a corporate hospitality package with priority entry to a private lounge called The Legacy Suite.
There are, naturally, objections. Players’ unions and European leagues have warned for years that the calendar is full. This is a claim FIFA approaches with the grave seriousness normally reserved for someone reporting a loose napkin near a trophy presentation.
A 64-team competition would also ask whether the 2030 World Cup can be made longer. The existing schedule runs from 8 June to 21 July. There is not much room on either side, unless the tournament begins while the previous season is still apologising to its supporters.
Format enthusiasts have already produced diagrams. Sixteen groups of four would restore the old, comprehensible arrangement, although it would also create several mornings when even committed fans would need a small lie-down before Moldova v Honduras.
That is not an argument against either country. It is an argument against expecting the public to maintain the emotional temperature of a final for six uninterrupted weeks.
FIFA has not confirmed the expansion. The proposal must still survive committees, calendars, broadcasters, host logistics and the minor question of whether every existing football competition would like to continue operating.
But the direction of travel is clear. The World Cup used to arrive every four years as a great interruption to ordinary life. It is gradually becoming ordinary life, with the occasional interruption for club football.
By 2030, the World Cup may be the biggest tournament on Earth. FIFA will then begin the difficult work of locating the remaining unsold matches.