The 2030 World Cup in Spain, Morocco and Portugal is now official. After presenting the candidacy dossier a few months ago, a 377-page document with a wealth of details, and having been given a score of 4.2 by FIFA a few days ago, today, an Extraordinary Congress of the highest body has ratified the candidacy as organizer of the World Cup.
Data on the venues project and how the venues will look in 2030 has also emerged. In the case of the Bernabéu, the stadium is already fully operational, but most of the other vanues still have to face major renovations - and some will even need to be built from scratch. The most striking case being the mega-project of the Hassan II stadium in Casablanca, which aspires to be one of the largest sports stadiums on the planet with a capacity of 115,000.
In fact, the Hassan II stadium will be the only stadium that will be able compete with Bernabéu, the favourite, or the new Camp Nou to host the final. Each stadium, depending on its capacity, as well as all kinds of details such as accessibility, VIP areas, parking... can opt to host higher or lower rounds of the tournament (round of 16, quarter finals, semi-finals).
In this dossier, there is even a curious section that highlights the largest events that have been hosted so far, in the case of stadiums that have already been built.
There are 11 proposed in Spain, five in Morocco and three in Portugal. In the case of Spain, a selection process had to be carried out in which stadiums such as Nuevo Mestalla in Valencia and Balaídos in Vigo were left out. These are the final 20 that have been chosen:
A lotação do Estádio da Luz vai ser aumentada para 70 mil lugares, revelou Rui Costa. pic.twitter.com/YbLkSO8uU8
The 2030 World Cup will feature a total of 48 teams (the six hosts: Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay plus another 42 teams).
There will be 104 games played at the tournament - the same as the next edition (2026) which will be held in the US, Canada and Mexico. The number is an increase from the 64 we saw in Qatar 2022.