World Cup Bidding Process Explained: What are the Selection Criteria?

Every FIFA World Cup host nation goes through a lengthy and highly regulated bidding process before earning the right to stage football’s biggest tournament.

But how exactly does FIFA decide who hosts the tournament?

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaching, many fans still aren’t aware of this process. Breaking down some of FIFA’s rules and requirements, this article shares the most important aspects of the World Cup bidding process that fans should know.

Bidding Process

At the start of a World Cup cycle, FIFA’s 211 members are given the chance to bid for the right to host the tournament. The process for this involves members having the chance to present their bid to the FIFA Council, who can then put forward a maximum of three bids to FIFA Congress—FIFA’s supreme legislative body where each member nation has one vote— for final voting.

If the maximum of three bids are in fact put forward, the first ballot involves each FIFA member voting for one of the three, with a majority (50%+) vote required to win. If a majority is not found, the second ballot begins. 

This involves the elimination of the bid with the fewest votes, leaving two remaining. For the upcoming World Cup, only two bids were put forward to begin with, so voting started in this phase. Members may also abstain from voting, as Spain did, or vote for neither bid, as Iran did.

In 2018, when the vote for the 2026 tournament took place, the joint Canada-USA-Mexico bid won with 134 votes. Morocco, the only other bid, received 65.

If a majority is not reached, here, a second phase of voting begins, which features a rule change.

FIFA’s Confederation Rotation Policy

In 2017, FIFA implemented a policy outlining that a member from a confederation that hosted either of the previous two World Cups is prohibited from bidding for the next. Therefore, for the 2026 World Cup, nations from UEFA and AFC could not bid, with the 2018 edition being held in Russia, and the 2022 tournament held in Qatar.

However, if a majority is not reached in the second ballot as mentioned above, the process would then open to members from these confederations, though this has not yet occurred during a World Cup bid.

What is Actually in a World Cup Bid?

So, what really makes up a World Cup bid?

To judge each candidate properly, FIFA requires bidding nations to submit a series of legal, financial, and strategic documents. These are:

– Bidding Registration

– Bidding Agreement

– Bid Book

– Bid Information Templates

– Hosting Documents 

Filled with host information and legal communications, these documents essentially provide FIFA with all the information they need, as well as the legal framework, for each voting member to make an informed decision.

One of the lesser-known, but still key, aspects in each bid is a set of government guarantees, agreed to with a Government Declaration from the relevant head of state.

The guarantees are certain requirements that FIFA needs from the government of the bidding nation, spanning administrative, operational, and fiscal support for the bid. Some of the guarantees outlined by FIFA discuss:

– Immigration and ease of movement for those associated with competing nations during tournament

– Tax exemptions for FIFA and associated third parties (justified by the “national importance and public interest” of the World Cup to the host nation, according to FIFA)

– The assumption of responsibility for safety and security by the host nation throughout the tournament 

– FIFA’s commercial rights, regarding which the host government is requested to recognise FIFA’s “unrestricted and inclusive ownership” of any commercial rights associated with the tournament 

– Acceptance to host other FIFA competitions as test events

– Legal framework protecting and guaranteeing the above requirements

How Are Bids Chosen?

Largely, bids are differentiated by what is included in their bid book, which features details of the host’s vision and wider strategy, key information about the country, and other technical matters.

For this bidding cycle edition, each bid book was first evaluated by the 2026 Bid Evaluation Task Force, who then submitted an evaluation report to the FIFA Council, which, to reiterate, is the body that puts the final three bids to FIFA Congress for final voting.

In the report, the task force evaluated each bid’s infrastructure and commercial potential using a one to five scoring system.

These infrastructure and commercial components are the two main categories involved, and are weighted differently (infrastructure: 70%, commercial: 30%).

These categories were further divided into subsections. Examples include stadiums, which were worth 35% of the overall score, and predicted organising costs, which were worth 10%.

As for the scores themselves, some categories have different minimum requirements. Stadiums must have a score of at least two out of five, for instance. Further details are outlined in FIFA’s Scoring System Overview.

After the report is submitted to FIFA Council, various selection criteria are applied, including:

– Compliance with bidding process and requirements

– Hosting vision and strategy (features contribution to development of football, legacy, the level of political support and stakeholder engagement across the main political parties

– Infrastructure

– The popularity of football in the host country

– Environmental impact of hosting

– Cost-revenue projections

An important note related to the bidding is the issue of funding.

FIFA has rules on this, stipulating that bidding members can raise money for the competition from both the public and private sector. Donations are also allowed to be accepted, as long as  “all reasonable steps are taken to ensure that such donors make no public reference or statement in any form to the fact, or nature, of their donations.”

Further, a bid cannot be sponsored, meaning no entity is permitted to publicly support and/or attach itself to the nation’s bid.

FIFA also does not allow the use of funds given to the member-nation by FIFA to be used as part of the bid. This includes initiatives such as FIFA Forward, which is designed to provide support for football development, and the rule is part of an attempt to ensure the money given by FIFA is used solely for its intended purpose rather than a World Cup bid.

Finally, it is worth noting that in an attempt to increase transparency, FIFA introduced an independent auditor to the 2026 cycle, whose role it was to monitor the integrity of the bidding process.

Overall, the bidding process is a complex and technical one. This article aimed to provide students and World Cup fans with general information as to how the bidding process for the tournament works, from government guarantees to selection criteria. For further details of the 2026 FIFA World Cup bids, the bid books are publicly available for both Morocco and the Canada-USA-Mexico joint bid.

Article by Zakaria Anani