The 2030 World Cup Could Grow to 64 Teams, and Soccer Is Already Pushing Back

The ball hasn't even started rolling at the 2026 World Cup and people are already talking about an even bigger tournament. The idea of expanding the World Cup to 64 teams in 2030 has been circulating through soccer's front offices for months, and it sounds less like a rumor and more like a plan already in motion.

It all started in March 2025, when CONMEBOL put on the table the possibility of expanding a competition that had just 24 teams back in the 1990s. A year later, FIFA president Gianni Infantino didn't rule out that expansion: "When you organize a World Cup, it's important to organize it for the whole world. It's not just Europe and South America, it's the entire world." Nobody has confirmed anything yet, but when CONMEBOL's own president posted this summer that there will be a "64-team tournament" for 2030, it became clear the idea is gaining traction.

If the 2026 World Cup was already a massive undertaking with three host countries accommodating 48 teams, how do you pull that off with 64? The planned 2030 host, split between Morocco, Portugal and Spain, would have to solve that puzzle.

A longer, more crowded tournament

With 64 teams, the group stage would be organized into 16 groups of four, doing away with the awkward 2026 setup where the best third-place finishers advance to the round of 16. The top two from each group would move straight into a round of 32.

The problem is the sheer number of matches: the 72 group games in 2026 would jump to 96 matches. If the average of 4.2 group games per day from the last World Cup were kept, the group stage would no longer last 17 days but closer to 23 days. Add in a knockout stage that would stay the same at 32 teams, and the whole tournament could stretch to 45 days, more than six weeks.

Squeezing those 96 matches into the same 17-day window isn't an easy fix either: it would mean roughly 5.6 games a day, and with at least an hour's gap between kickoffs, some matches would have to be played at odd hours on six-game days. Several games could be scheduled simultaneously, as happens on the final group matchday, but that would leave some national teams without the spotlight, broadcasters without revenue, and fans simply unable to watch everything.

LaLiga president Javier Tebas was blunt about it in July:

"Increasing the number of national teams makes no sense. Not everything can revolve around the World Cup... they're destroying the soccer industry."Javier Tebas

More slots, but for whom?

Using the percentage breakdown applied in 2026 as a reference, the 2030 slot distribution could look like this: UEFA with 20 (up from 16), CAF with 12 (up from 10), AFC with 11 (up from 9), CONMEBOL with 7 (up from 6), Concacaf with 8 (up from 6), and OFC with 2 (up from 1), leaving four spots for the final playoff.

More slots also mean less pressure in World Cup qualifying, which could drain some of its commercial and sporting appeal. UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin put it plainly in April 2025: "It's not a good idea for our qualifiers." In Concacaf, with eight slots up for grabs, the classic final round between Mexico, the United States and Canada as we know it today could even disappear.

The toll on players

Behind all of this is the health of the players. The organization FIFPRO had already warned about fixture overload: "Unfortunately, FIFA has consistently refused to include domestic leagues and player unions in its decision-making process (...) it has repeatedly favored its own competitions and commercial interests, to the detriment of player welfare."

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters struck a similar note: "The feedback we get from players is that there's too much soccer being played and that there's constant expansion." And Concacaf president Victor Montagliani was direct in April 2025: "I don't think expanding the men's World Cup to 64 teams is the right call for the tournament itself and for the entire soccer ecosystem, from national teams to club competitions, leagues and players."

There's also a lingering question about the tournament's overall level. Teams like Cape Verde, ranked 69th by FIFA, or Ghana, ranked 74th, made it to the round of 16 in 2026. AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa warned about the risk of leaving things open-ended: "If the topic stays open to change, not only will the door remain open to expanding the tournament to 64 teams, but someone could eventually ask to raise the number to 132. Where would we end up? It would be chaos."

Are there enough stadiums?

In 2026, 16 venues hosted 104 matches, an average of 6.5 games per stadium. With 128 matches in a 64-team format, Morocco, Portugal and Spain would need close to 19 stadiums, though 23 venues have already been proposed across the six countries involved, including the three matches Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay would host to mark the tournament's centennial. A far cry from 1994, when nine venues were enough.

The question hanging in the air is which countries will still be able to take on a World Cup of this size going forward, and whether co-hosting will stop being an option and become a requirement.