The Ladies’s World Cup will probably be expanded from 32 to 48 groups from the 2031 version onwards after world soccer’s governing physique FIFA stated its council permitted the proposal at a digital assembly on Friday.
The 48-team World Cup will undertake a 12-group format, rising the overall variety of matches from 64 to 104 – the identical because the expanded males’s World Cup in 2026 – and increasing the match by one week.
The 2027 Ladies’s World Cup, which will probably be held in Brazil, can have 32 groups. The 2023 version in Australia and New Zealand was the primary to have 32 groups, up from 24 within the 2019 match hosted by France.
“This isn’t nearly having 16 extra groups taking part in within the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup however taking the following steps in relation to the ladies’s sport normally,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino stated in an announcement.
“…extra FIFA member associations have the prospect to learn from the match to develop their girls’s soccer buildings from a holistic perspective.”
The US is poised to be named host of the 2031 Ladies’s World Cup as the one bid, marking the third time the nation will stage the match after beforehand internet hosting it in 1999 and 2003.
The UK is the only bidder for the 2035 match. Hosts for the 2031 and 2035 editions are but to be ratified.
Though there are issues that video games might be one-sided with 48 groups, Infantino stated the 2023 version confirmed sides are closing the hole on the elite.
“The FIFA Ladies’s World Cup 2023, the primary during which groups from all confederations gained at the very least one sport and groups from 5 confederations reached the knockout stage, amongst many different data, set a brand new customary for world competitiveness,” he added.
“This determination ensures we’re sustaining the momentum by way of rising girls’s soccer globally.”