The 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico, and the United States will be the first World Cup to feature 48 teams, up from 32 teams at every World Cup since 1998 – but that’s not the only change.
The 2026 World Cup will be longer, feature far more games, and it will see a brand new group stage, qualifying, and knockout format.
In this video, HITC Sevens takes a look at the new FIFA World Cup format from the 2026 tournament onwards, the magnitude of the reforms that have been introduced, why they’ve been brought in, and what it means for various national teams and the future of the World Cup.
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world , The New World Cup Format Is Absolutely Insane , #World #Cup #Format #Absolutely #Insane
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And somehow, Thogden will still manage to watch all the World Cup matches.
I blame America for almost all of this fiasco. They carried out what was in effect a lawfare coup launched against FIFA with the FBI raids to bring down the admittedly corrupt Blatter. But Blatter was just a small time crook and he wasn't especially interested in tech crap like VAR. Now we have major league corruption in the shape of Infantino and the ruination of the beautiful game with constant tinkering and introduction of new rules and tech. Meanwhile major league crook Infantino resides in that well-known heartland of football, Qatar, and the US have gone back to mostly ignoring the sport altogether. The overthrow of Blatter was just another disastrous act of US-led imperialism basically.
world cup getting delivered to people that have zero knowledge of football
😂I just love your sense of humor brother-man with a pinch of sarcasm… You're the best
I've felt for a long time now that football has become 'soccer'. By that I mean it's entirely based on commercial outcomes first, and the notion of entertainnment being something akin to a Disney-fication of of the sport. The idea of making football more global is fine, but not at the expense of its own integrity and competitive nature. It's become passified and geared towards markets as opposed to the best Countries who will undoubtedly suffer at the expense of more games and travel.
Yeah, the average standard of play will reduce a bit… At the same time, every single team that makes the World Cup in 2026 would have likely absolutely destroyed every single World Cup team from like 40 years ago since the average skill level of any given professional footballer is so much higher now, I don't think it's actually a problem…
World Cup final 2030: Crypto Crawlers vs. NFT United in the "carbon neutral" (hahaha) Queen Saud Stadium in Riyadh. No cisgenders allowed.
What a woke world we're waking up in one day….
Just do 64 like originally planned. 48 is so stupid. Stick with 32, 48 is fucking dumb.
I want to see a world cup with the bottom 32/48 teams, i bet it would be rather entertaining and fun
My favorite part about the expansion is the possibility for more African countries to qualify. With the former format, it was a brutal battle. I feel like 14 countries have what it takes to go to the WC but now, it will be 9 teams instead of 5. As a surprise, Comoros, my country of origin, is leader of its qualifying group, ahead of Ghana and Mali but there were only 2 games played and 8 need to be played, including two tough away games in Ghana and Mali.
My theory : this is a preparation for an expansion at 64 teams by 2036 or 40.
Bro thinks fifa is stupid they knew what was gonna happen, it was a well thought out plan.
Second part????
They should just go to 64 Teams, 16 Groups of 4 Teams
I think there should be better way to determine winner , specially in knock out stages take out most luck out equation , like best 3 , similar how in NBA play off , or top 6 teams play round robin to determine the winner
love the beautiful way your sarcasm comes across iin the one, well done!
if for the seeded teams a 48 team world cup qualifying stage would be just a formality why not have seeded teams just progress through to the knockout round. thus dropping the size of the world cup footprint. also there could be a reason to stay seeded because if you drop say from the top 10 you would have to go through qualifying again then the round of 32 then the round of 16, so on and so on
Putting FIFArce folly into people
It'll be 12 groups of 4 with top 2 advancing together with the 8 best 3rd places. I don't like this format, but will still have the final day simultaneous match drama
Ah yes, EVERY game finishing in penalties.
Your team just beat San Marino by 28-0 but now has to do a penalty shootout as well? Really?
World Cup is now officially made for the rich. No ordinary citizen can afford to see all of their country matches scattered hundreds of miles aways.
Why hasn't the world cup been played on the Moon yet? Someone call Elon and get it mooning 🌝
How about this format? 16 groups of 3 teams. The top two in each group advance to a second group stage with 8 groups of 4 teams where the top two advance to the knock-out round. The two teams that advance from one group in the first group stage forms a group with two teams from another group, the match played between the two advancing teams in the first group stage is then counted in the second group stage, so they don't need to play each other again.
With this format, we get a 48-team tournament and get to keep the current 32-team group stage. The maximum of matches one team can play will be 8(2+2 groupstage matches and 4 in the knock-out round) and a total number of 96 matches will be played.
The 3-teams groups is less likely to get situations where it's beneficial for both teams to tie against each other in the last match of the group, because even if you are safe from being knocked out, you rather take 3 points whit you to the second groupstage than 1 point.
Wales are gonna win 🏴
32 was perfect, i hate fifa
Isn't the underlying point to all this that the World Cup is basically the only way FIFA makes money? Wouldn't a solution be to impose a tax on all football competitions based upon a percentage of TV rights, for example, that goes to FIFA as the governing body so they can have a steady income and be less reliant on World Cup revenue (they might even allow the hosts to earn a bit)
Based on this year’s AFCON and Asia Cup, I don’t think diluting the quality is a valid complaint about a 48-team format… Instead of thinking about top teams’ chance of failure I think it’s better to think of less highly-evaluated teams’ chance of success.
If it were up to me, I would have made it double elimination from start to finish, 2 losses and you are out(yes, bracket reset should be used in the grand finals)
From over regulating penalty kicks by making goalkeepersb immobile before the kick and allowing play to fake as much as they want before a penalty kick is taken now fifa wants to finally ruin football because of money by increase teams participation to 48 instead of the usual 32 frustrating and making player fatigue before a new season nonsense. Infantino the continuation of Sepp Blater
I would agree with you on the surface level but I think your perspective is too heavily influenced by the fact that you are English and see your team in the World Cup basically every single time with no uncertainty. The 2021 Euros were really remembarable for me since it was the first time in my country's (Finland) history that we even attended a top tier international competition. Sure, the level of football will go down marginally but many countries have also taken massive steps in the right direction. Lots of African nations as well as japan for example have improved massively so the degree in which the level of play will go down will be quite small compared to if this sort of expansion was done a few decades ago.
another one in the ongoing saga "Lets shit on FIFA"
FIFA will wring the neck of the sport for a penny at this point. The tournament is completely out of logical scale.
Really good video Alfie, don’t know why but this video just hit different 💪⚽️
at some point FIFA will support separatist movements just so that they get more countries for a world cup
Gianni Infantino, more like Game Inflatino.
I just hate that a 3rd place team gets to advance.
Just bump up the tournament to 64, or drop down to 32.
No more than 50% of the teams should make the knockout stage
I think this only works if there is a radical change in qualification and therefore abandon international matches until end of season and have a much reduced qualifying aspect
A lot of boring matches are coming up, that not many will bother with, viewing figures will probably drop… This could be a huge own goal for FIFA.
'Meaning 32 teams will still progress'. Missed an opportunity to put a picture of Will Still in there. I expect this level of humour from you. Keep up please (great videos as always, thanks).
I hate the fact that it's groups of 3, group games are most thrilling for smaller countries like us (sweden)
Why not do 52 teams, 13 groups of 4, the 6 best third out of 13 advances.
Instead of 8 thirds out of 12 advancing…
There is no good solution to the scheduling here since 48 simply cannot divide by four all down the line but Alfie's idea is about the best one there is. Calculating on the basis of 12 four-team groups, that's 72 group stage matches, coming down to the knockouts with eight Round of Sixteen fixtures, then four quarter-final matches, then two semifinals, the third-place game and the Final for a total of 88 fixtures if I have my math correct. You're looking at about a 42-day tournament which is still far less than ideal but I suppose it's better than what we're looking at with the FIFA plan.
In the current FIFA rankings 26 of the top 48 teams are from Europe, but only 16 are allowed to qualify. European teams are being screwed over. Since FIFA dont seem to care much about competitive integrity compared to expanding globally, they should just give China and India automatic qualification spots.
2:34 what is this hoodie/suit nonsense. horrendous