The 2026 FIFA World Cup will begin on June 11, opening a tournament that will be the biggest in the competition’s 96-year history. The event will bring 48 teams from across six confederations into a new 12-group format that changes the path to the title from the first whistle.
From the group stage, the top two teams in each of the 12 groups will move on to the round of 32, along with the eight best third-placed teams. From there, the tournament will run through the last 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and the final, giving the expanded field more room to breathe than the old 32-team format.
The scale is hard to miss. Nearly a quarter of FIFA’s 211 national member associations will be represented in 2026, a reach that makes this edition larger than any before it. The World Trade Organization estimated the expanded tournament will produce $80.1bn in gross output, including $30.5bn for the cohost, the United States.
That economic backdrop came into focus in mid-April, when FIFA said it expects to generate $11bn in World Cup revenue this year. Gianni Infantino said at the CNBC Invest in America Forum in Washington, DC, on April 15, that the money will go back into football projects in 211 countries. “That goes in 211 countries all over the world, to allow football projects, academies, stadiums, pitches, competitions for girls, for boys, in 211 countries – more than the UN – to be played and organised,” he said.
Infantino also argued that the flow of revenue is part of the sport’s wider spread, saying that three quarters of those countries would probably not be able to have organised sport without the advance they receive from a competition like the World Cup. The numbers give FIFA’s expansion a practical edge, not just a symbolic one: more teams, more matches and a wider financial base tied to the same event.
Arsene Wenger has framed the enlarged tournament as a step toward making football truly global and lifting standards. He said the World Cup began with 13 teams in 1930, moved to 16, then to 24 in 1982 and to 32 in 1998, adding that 48 teams is now the right number. In his view, the change reflects the way the competition has grown over time and the way more nations now expect a place on the stage.
That is the tension inside the new format: FIFA says the expansion opens the game, while the tournament itself becomes more complex and more crowded than the version fans knew for a generation. The question is no longer only when does the world cup start, but how different the event will look once June 11 arrives and the largest field in its history begins to sort itself out.
