If you thought the 2026 FIFA World Cup was wild, wait until you see the next two.
The 48-team tournament, spanning the USA, Mexico and Canada was controversial in the build-up for numerous reasons but as expected once the football began, those concerns faded into the background.
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There have certainly still been issues – from the high ticket prices, to the border issues for many fans, officials and players, most notably the treatment of the Iranian team – but for the most part the World Cup is working as intended.
We’re certainly a long way from the old days of a single football-mad nation simply using its world-renowned stadiums to host the tournament – France 1998, Germany 2006 and Brazil 2014 come to mind.
South Korea and Japan showed in 2002 that two nations could unite, and share the logistical load. Qatar then took things a step further in 2022, controversially winning the bid over Australia, the USA and others; the tiny nation not known for its footballing prowess then using its riches built on natural resources to construct or renovate eight venues.
But things are going to get even crazier over the next two World Cups – one of them spanning three continents and requiring mid-tournament 13-hour flights, and the other featuring plans looking more like video game concept art.
Even if you think you know what’s coming up in 2030 and 2034, you may not realise the true extent of it all.
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THE 2030 WORLD CUP: SIX-NATION MADNESS TO SEE TEAMS CROSS ATLANTIC MID-TOURNAMENT
It takes a pretty big country to host a World Cup, especially with 104 matches being played under the new 48-team format.
To help that, the 2026 event was split between three – the USA, Mexico and Canada – easing the burden on any one nation, though creating travel complications.
However that’s nothing compared to the 2030 World Cup which will be hosted by Spain, Portugal, and Morocco… and also Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
If you aren’t a big map person, we’ll help you out here – the Atlantic Ocean sits between those two trios.
Officially, the 2030 World Cup is being held in six countries to celebrate the tournament’s 100th anniversary. Uruguay hosted the 1930 tournament, and one match will be held in its capital Montevideo; likewise in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Asuncion, Paraguay.
Those three nations thus count as host nations, and have automatically qualified, while all of the other matches are being held across Spain, Portugal and Morocco – which is a lot more reasonable, given how close the Iberian Peninsula and northern African nation are.
It’s expected six teams will participate in the centenary games in South America, needing to then fly all the way to Europe to play their second group games… which is obviously pretty crazy; a flight from Buenos Aries to Barcelona takes 13 hours.
The teams will almost certainly be given an extended break between matches, likely meaning the tournament begins in South America followed by a multi-day gap and then its resumption in Europe.
Multi-nation World Cup bids will be commonplace over the coming decades, especially if FIFA looks at expanding the tournament even further; there simply aren’t enough stadiums in most countries, given that FIFA requires 14 all-seat venues with a capacity of 40,000.
The two triplets – Spain, Portugal and Morocco, and Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay – were each looking to bid anyway, with the former bid receiving a higher score on FIFA’s evaluation report.
FIFA conceded in its evaluation this combined World Cup would cause “a significant negative impact on the climate”.
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Throwing the triplets together has some merit due to the anniversary, but for all these reasons has still been controversial; though moreso because of what including all six nations did to the bidding process for the next World Cup.
FIFA’s principle of rotating the tournament between continents meant 2026 host North America wasn’t a contender for 2034; then by including Europe, South America and Africa in the 2030 event, suddenly we were down to just two options – Asia or Oceania.
The decision on 2034 hosting rights was then made with barely a month’s notice, and while Australia and Indonesia had both considered bidding – either separately or together – it was simply too rushed of a process.
But Saudi Arabia seemed conveniently well-prepared though and, as the lone candidate, claimed 2034 bidding rights – arguably the pinnacle of its push to become a major player in global sport in recent years.
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THE 2034 WORLD CUP: STADIUMS IN THE SKY
Saudi Arabia had previously wanted to make a strange joint bid for 2030 also including Egypt and Greece – FIFA would’ve had to change the rules to allow the Saudis to make this bid, but its president Gianni Infantino was willing to do so.
Instead, across 2023 plans changed with Saudi Arabia becoming a sole bidder for the 2034 tournament. This meant it would need to commit to a massive construction plan, with 11 of its 15 stadiums being new (even though previous bidding process required a minimum of seven existing stadiums).
The Saudi bid was given the highest rating in FIFA’s history, with a “medium” human rights risk and a “low” environmental protection risk.
The evaluation flagged concerns over the timing of the tournament – Qatar’s 2022 event had to be moved to November/December, avoiding the traditional northern summer timeslot where temperatures on the Arabian Peninsula can exceed 40 degrees – but said Saudi Arabia “pledges to collaborate closely … to determine the optimal timing for the competition”.
The New York Times reported Infantino played a major role in pushing for Saudi Arabia to host the tournament, to the extent he was “pitching” the nation when speaking with Italian officials in 2020 – right in the middle of the Covid pandemic – around a role in the abandoned 2030 bid plan.
In that report, a FIFA spokesman said “the selection of venues for the FIFA World Cup takes place through an open and transparent bidding process” and denied Infantino had “triggered or initiated” discussions about the Saudi bid with other nations.
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Once Saudi Arabia won the hosting rights, attention turned to the extraordinary plans involved – with human rights groups raising similar concerns to those discussed heading into the 2022 Qatar event.
Migrant workers played a key role in Qatar’s stadium builds, with an official conceding there had been “between 400 and 500” worker deaths in the 12 years prior to the tournament; a report by The Guardian estimated the number was closer to 6500.
FIFA’s bid evaluation said the Saudi World Cup had the “good potential to act as a catalyst” for human rights reforms.
Either way, migrant workers will play a role in the construction of the new Saudi venues, some of which appear to be utterly extraordinary.
False claims around a stadium being built atop a skyscraper went viral in late 2025 – fooling anyone who didn’t take two seconds to think about how wide the building would need to be, and the impossibility of how many escalators you’d need to build.
To be clear, the image in the post embedded above is not real… but Saudi Arabia DOES want to build a stadium 350 metres above the ground.
The NEOM Stadium is part of the Saudi plans for ‘The Line’, which was initially slated to be a 500-metre tall, 200-metre wide building spanning 170 kilometres (yes, you read that correctly) with mirrored walls.
It would have – note the past tense – accommodated nine million people, with five kilometres built by 2030 and the entire space-age creation being finished by 2045.
It’s hard to actually picture this sort of thing in your mind; imagine the Empire State Building, but a bit taller. And then imagine it goes for 170 kilometres. Through the desert.
The project has reportedly been cut back, with the Wall Street Journal reporting the full-sized project had been budgeted at $US8.8 trillion – which, to be fair, sounds like a good deal when you remember we’re talking about a building that spans most of the distance between Sydney and Canberra.
The city of Neom, on the Red Sea on Saudi Arabia’s north-west coast, is the centrepiece of the mega-project and includes the planned NEOM Stadium.
Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid book estimated the venue would have a capacity of 45,000 people, hosting group stage, round-of-32, round-of-16 and quarter-final games.
It was also to be built on top of a marina, carved into The Line.
“With a pitch situated more than 350 metres above the ground, stunning vistas and a roof created from the city itself, the stadium will be an experience like no other,” the bid book reads.
“It will sit at the heart of a new sports-focused neighbourhood, adjacent to the Health and Well-Being District and the University, easily accessed from multiple levels in THE LINE.”
The Line was also proposed as the host of the 2034 World Cup draw.
It’s unclear whether the NEOM Stadium will go ahead as planned, with the Saudi Public Investment Fund recently re-evaluating its priorities, including pulling funding from LIV Golf.
But the futuristic design – the stadiums kinda look like Halo maps – wasn’t limited to that one venue.
The ROSHN Stadium, for example, looks like a series of green shards cutting into the air – its post-World Cup primary use is designated as a “community stadium”.
The Prince Mohammed bin Salman Stadium in Qiddiya, meanwhile, is surrounded by a series of seemingly-floating purple rectangles, like some sort of mid-assembly Transformer.
These will be utterly remarkable buildings if they are completed as designed, though it’s unclear how much is truly possible.