Following a riveting World Cup in 2026 that marked the first time the tournament included 48 teams, talks of further expansion are heating up.
Life across the globe is returning to a normal tempo for sports fans following the 2026 FIFA World Cup Final on Sunday, which saw Spain triumph over Argentina in extra time to win their second World Cup in team history.
This year’s tournament was a blazing success for the controversy-laden FIFA as well as the three host nations of the United States, Canada and Mexico, with matches contested all across the continent in what was a worldwide celebration of the planet’s most played sport.
Although the tournament concluded with longtime powerhouses in the final four with England and France joining Spain and Argentina, this year’s World Cup featured an immeasurable amount of drama, with several teams taking Cinderella runs into the knockout stages.
Much of this drama and entertainment was made possible by the tournament’s expansion from 32 to 48 teams, a change made for the 2026 event after the World Cup featured 32 teams in each tournament from 1998 to 2022.
The expanded format allowed Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan and Uzbekistan to all make their World Cup debuts, while Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq broke long droughts by returning to the event.
While an expansion immediately from 48 to 64 teams may seem a bit haphazard after just a single tournament under the 2026 format, the amount of excitement generated in new places with this year’s event will certainly play a factor in whatever decision is made.
Already, the 2030 World Cup is suiting up to be the most international version of the tournament yet – which is saying something after three host countries put on a show this year.
In addition to Portugal, Morocco and Spain splitting the main hosting duties in 2030, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay will all host matches in commemoration of the 100-year anniversary of the FIFA World Cup – meaning six different nations alone will automatically qualify as host countries.
With a tournament set to take place on three different continents in six different countries, it would only make sense to up the ante on international inclusion – with expansion of the FIFA World Cup being a distinct phenomenon from the non-stop expansion battles surrounding the College Football Playoff and NCAA March Madness basketball tournament in the U.S.
In those cases, I sympathize with the argument against expansion. While March Madness expands from 68 to 76 teams for the 2027 event, it won’t exactly come with the implication that more schools are getting a chance – as all of the eight new spots in the tournament are at-large bids, meaning they will almost certainly go to a Power 5 school.
In a case like this, expansion of the tournament helps nobody and nothing but corporate interests, be that of the top-dollar universities participating or the networks and large conferences reaping the benefits from airing more games.
I’m not going to pretend like expansion of the World Cup wouldn’t mean these exact same things to the networks that air the tournament, its many sponsors and the eternally corrupt FIFA itself – and I’m not trying to get anyone to restore their faith and trust in an organization that has lost that from millions of people across the world in recent years.
Yet at the same time, comparing the endless milking of cash in American college sports to what the expansion of the FIFA World Cup would mean to fans across the world, who would maybe get the chance to see their country compete in the world’s biggest sporting event for the first time.
As of the most recent FIFA men’s rankings, there are 211 national teams that are ranked – which is 14 more teams than the number of sovereign states on the planet, which stands at 197. With how significant it is for many countries to get through what is needed to qualify for the World Cup, I’m not advocating for limitless expansion, or even that far beyond 64 teams – which to me has always been the optimal size for a large tournament.
Introducing another 16 teams to the tournament would mean that the dreams of another 16 nations would get their time in the spotlight on the world’s biggest stage in sports, serving as the ideal opportunity to grow the game with new audiences and inspire new players in countries where that may not have happened if not for a World Cup run.
None of those factors are really at play when discussing the expansion of college football and basketball postseason tournaments stateside. The international market for both sports – especially college football – is rather limited. Both sports are absolutely massive, but don’t exactly have much room to grow beyond perhaps supplying an underdog school with a Cinderella run.
Yet in terms of the FIFA World Cup, that underdog school is much more than just George Mason University or Butler University – it’s an entire country, oftentimes a country that much of the world has never heard of or thought about, getting a chance to etch their names into history books.
I say this as someone who loves a Cinderella run during March Madness – there is simply no comparing what a few wins on a big stage mean to a country with all odds against them compared to one of hundreds of colleges and universities in the U.S.
I don’t mean to discredit any UMBC or Fairleigh Dickinson alum at all – but those kind of wins become cultural milestones when it’s a country on the winning end of it. And hell, do we as Americans even need to think that hard about what a Cinderella run on the international stage means? If we are still milking the Miracle on Ice 46 years later, I think it only makes sense to imagine what those wins could mean for dozens of underdog countries.
This year, we were close to getting a few of those moments. Harry Kane’s late-game heroics in the quarterfinal spoiled what was an incredible run from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Cape Verde nearly dethroned Argentina in what would have been one of the most significant upsets in tournament history. Although these underdog countries didn’t quite make it to the final stages of the event, an expanded field offers more opportunities to countries just like that – while perhaps making advancement less of a sure thing for the tournament blue bloods.
Speaking of tournament blue bloods, one has been absent for the last three FIFA World Cups, which also perhaps provides some credence to the argument of expansion. While nobody believes that the winner of March Madness is always equivalent to the best team in college basketball in a given season, an expansion to 64 teams in the World Cup would perhaps make the tournament a bit more indicative of who the best team is.
While it was a 48-team field this year, the World Cup did not feature the 48 highest-ranked teams – as qualifications are broken down geographically, simply meaning that it’s easier to qualify for the tournament in some parts of the world than it may be in others.
This of course helps explain the glaring absence of Italy from the last three World Cups, despite a global ranking of #15, the highest of a non-World Cup team by a fair margin. By expanding the field, the World Cup would both create more opportunities for underdogs to emerge while also adding even more validity to the tournament’s results, with it likely that fewer high-ranked teams would miss out on the tournament entirely.
What I say should be taken with a grain of salt – I’m not much of an association football fan and viewed this tournament as a way to get into the sport, and I don’t have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to international play outside of the World Cup. Yet I do think it’s worth making the point that the World Cup serves as perhaps the most prime example of the world uniting over sport.
In its simplest terms, expanding the tournament is opening the doors for millions more people to feel like they are a part of the biggest sporting event in the world.
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