International football tournaments are among the anticipated events in any sport fan’s calendar. Host nations have created spectacles to behold ever since the first World Cup in Uruguay 93 years ago, and the nostalgia surrounding great competitions gone by fuels excitement at what’s to come.
But there is significant change on the horizon.
So far, the World Cup has only been co-hosted by more than one nation once in the men’s game (South Korea-Japan 2002) and another once in the women’s (Australia-New Zealand 2023). Additionally, the 1997 women’s Euros was co-hosted by Norway and Sweden, while two men’s Euros (Belgium-Netherlands 2000 and Austria-Switzerland) saw hosting duties shared. More recently, Euro 2020 became only the second international football tournament ever to have more than two hosts.
The then-president of UEFA, Michel Platini, asserted that Euro 2020’s unusual hosting format — which saw matches spread widely around Europe — would be a one-off, “romantic” event to celebrate the competition’s 60th anniversary. It now appears to have been the first step in a gradual but powerful shift.
The 2026 men’s World Cup will be jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada; 2030 will have Spain, Portugal and Morocco as its main hosts and Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as honorary ones; the two European Championships after Germany 2024 will also be co-hosted (Britain & Ireland 2028 and Italy-Turkey 2032). For balance, the next women’s Euros in 2025 will be held solely in Switzerland while the hosts for the 2027 World Cup are yet to be decided.
Nonetheless, the trend is obvious: co-hosting is in. Before long, it’ll be considered the new normal, if it isn’t already.
This shift is not occurring without opposition. In condemnation of the hosting format for the 2030 World Cup, Football Supporters Europe stated: “FIFA continues its cycle of destruction against the greatest tournament on earth. [It’s] horrendous for supporters, [and] disregards the environment […] It’s the end of the World Cup as we know it.”
France head coach Didier Deschamps joined in with the chorus of criticism directed FIFA’s way, saying: “I like things that are more coherent in a sporting and ethical event. I don’t think there is much coherence there.” The decision to have multiple countries hosting a single tournament certainly flies in the face of supporter needs, logistical questions and environmental considerations.
There is a stark dichotomy between Qatar, smaller than Wales, hosting singlehandedly last year while the USA, Mexico and Canada — all of which have hosted men’s or women’s tournaments before — are set to co-host in 2026. Deschamps is therefore quite right to cite a lack of coherence, especially with Saudi Arabia poised to be sole hosts for the 2034 World Cup after Spain share with Portugal and Morocco in 2030.
It’s difficult to ignore the suspicion that FIFA is using the tournament to benefit countries with which it has sympathetic relationships. However, the factors behind hosting decisions are multifarious and cannot necessarily be reduced to one great sportswashing conspiracy.
Economic considerations are chief. Qatar’s World Cup cost in the region of $220bn — by far the most expensive football tournament to date — and required significant preparations, especially infrastructure-related, in the preceding years. Simply put, singlehandedly hosting the World Cup might no longer be worthwhile financially.
Qatar was quite happy to bear significant expenses in pursuit of other non-economic objectives — attempting to deflect controversy, burnish the state’s reputation and grow the sport in the region — and Saudi Arabia would host with similar priorities in mind. These are states that can afford to spend hundreds of billions on what is essentially a PR exercise; most, however, simply can’t.
For the majority of nations, the World Cup is such an expensive event to host that sharing those costs and duties is now the only conceivable way of doing so.
Logistical questions are also involved. Nations such as Spain have singlehandedly hosted World Cups before but perhaps foresee the tournament’s expansion to 48 teams presenting new and overwhelming organisational difficulties; after all, each participating team needs hotels and training facilities, and there are only a handful of countries with that kind of existing infrastructure.
The last four World Cups all required significant preparations to bring the host nations up to a level where they could cope with the responsibilities: Russia to an extent, but certainly Qatar, South Africa and even Brazil all saw several new stadiums built and their urban landscapes transformed, often with significant economic and human costs. These efforts, however, showed a grave lack of foresight in that these facilities became essentially useless after the final whistle — such is the effect of building large, expensive-to-run stadiums in areas lacking local teams who can meet operating costs.
Ultimately, in order to prevent such situations from reoccurring, the World Cup can only be hosted by nations that are capable and prepared: there must be sizeable stadiums, adequate transport infrastructure and guaranteed use after the tournament ends. Co-hosting makes meeting these criteria much easier and might improve the human rights issues which sprung up in the hefty preparations before the tournaments in South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar.
However, in the case of 2026, the fact that the US is hosting 60 of the 80 matches while Mexico and Canada hold 10 each makes co-hosting feel like a symbolic gesture rather than a logistical or economic necessity.
The World Cup doubtless has long-lasting, beneficial effects on its hosts, by boosting national pride and tourism and growing their footballing cultures. The reality, however, is that the running costs and level of infrastructure required are such that there are only a handful of countries that could hold the tournament in any given year. The easiest solution would be to share the hosting duties among that select few on a rolling basis, but that would be a shame; if the same country were to host the World Cup twice in, say, 20 years, it would remove much of the tournament’s inherent appeal.
These competitions bring nations together and showcase distant and diverse cultures: remember the images of sombreros at Mexico ’86 or South African vuvuzelas in 2010. That the tournaments get shared around makes up the beauty of the hosting process, and co-hosting allows them to be shared around even more. There’s still plenty of nations that the World Cup has yet to explore.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino asserts that this shift is evidence that, “in a divided world, FIFA and football are uniting.” The symbolic message of sport bringing people together is undoubtedly important, and although football fandom is an often tribal affair, World Cups usually have a unifying effect. The fact remains, though, that it’s much easier to bring people together in a single place.
Football’s governing bodies are ultimately pitting supporter experiences and sport’s symbolic power against economic and logistical considerations; it’s a thankless task, but a little more sympathy for the average fan wouldn’t go amiss.
Additionally something which FIFA and UEFA have so far completely failed to address is the environmental impact of the shift towards co-hosted competitions. The 2030 World Cup is set to be the first in which tams will play in two different hemispheres at the same tournament. With increased air travel for athletes and supporters alike, expanding the World Cup across multiple continents is concerning and frankly tone-deaf, especially after FIFA’s false promises relating to Qatar 2022.
At least travel within the host zone was kept minimal last year: all eight of Qatar’s stadiums were located within 33 miles of each other. By contrast, the 2026 World Cup will see the longest-ever distance between two host cities, and 2030 will break that record again. The talk of group stages being pooled geographically raises another (albeit less important) issue about sporting integrity and would not necessarily reduce travel for teams which go far in the tournament very much at all.
Although hosting decisions are complicated, it’s disappointing that football’s governing bodies aren’t striving for solutions in which supporter needs and environmental considerations are chief; only then could FIFA justifiably tap into the symbolism of sport bringing people together. As it stands, economic and geopolitical factors reign supreme and, unless that soon changes, it will be the end of the World Cup as we know it.
Whether or not this shift is viewed as a positive or negative occurrence will depend on who you ask: prospective host nations will likely hail the newfound acceptability of co-hosting and its potential economic benefits; the governing bodies will appreciate that sharing duties and responsibilities makes hosting decisions a whole lot easier. Participating teams and their supporters, however, will rightly resent increased travel time and might well pine for the tournaments of old, with their deep explorations of diverse cultures and their ability to momentarily places any nation under the world’s spotlight.
We might never see spectacles like those again.
