What is the World Cup? And what is its history?

The FIFA World Cup is an international football competition contested by the national men's football teams of the member countries of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the global governing body of the sport.

The tournament is held every four years since its first event in 1930, with the exceptions of 1942 and 1946 due to World War II.

The final stage of the tournament is often referred to as the FIFA World Cup Finals. The current format of the finals includes thirty-two national teams competing in stadiums within the host country over a period of approximately one month. Qualification rounds are held over the preceding three years to determine the participating teams.

The World Cup

It is an international football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the global governing body of the sport.

The current format includes a qualification stage, which takes place over the preceding three years to determine the teams qualified for the tournament stage. In the tournament stage, 32 teams compete, including the host nations that qualify automatically, for the title in stadiums within the host country over the course of approximately one month.

Eight national teams have won the FIFA World Cup in the 21 tournaments held so far. Brazil has won five times and is the only team to have appeared in every tournament. The other winners of the World Cup are Germany and Italy, each with four titles. Argentina, France, and the inaugural winner Uruguay have won the title twice each, while England and Spain have won it once each.

The history of the World Cup

It is the most famous football tournament in the world, as well as the most watched and followed individual sporting event globally. The cumulative viewership of all matches of the 2006 FIFA World Cup was estimated at around 26.29 billion people, with approximately 715.1 million people watching the final match, which is nearly a ninth of the world's population.

The FIFA World Cup has been hosted by 17 countries. Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, and Mexico have each hosted the tournament twice, while Uruguay, Switzerland, Sweden, Chile, England, Argentina, Spain, the United States, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Russia and quatar have each hosted it once.

In 2026, Canada, the United States, and Mexico will co-host the FIFA World Cup, giving Mexico the distinction of being the first country to host matches in three World Cup finals.

The first-ever international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England, which ended in a 0-0 draw. The first international tournament, the inaugural British Home Championship, was held in 1884.

Due to the increasing popularity of football in other parts of the world in the early 20th century, it was held as a demonstration sport without medal events at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics. However, the International Olympic Committee retroactively upgraded their status to official events.

FIFA

After the establishment of FIFA in 1904, an attempt was made to organize an international football tournament among countries outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were the early days of international football, and FIFA's official history describes the competition as a failure.

At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. The event was organized by the Football Association (FA), the administrative body for football in England, and was exclusively for amateur players, regarded more as an exhibition than a competition. Great Britain, represented by the England amateur football team, won the gold medals. They repeated this feat at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.

The host country is now selected through a vote by the FIFA Executive Committee. This is done under a single transferable vote system. The National Football Association of the country wishing to host the event receives a document called the "Hosting Agreement" from FIFA, which outlines the steps and requirements that must be met to submit a strong bid.

The association wishing to host the event also receives a model that must be filled out and returned to FIFA. This document represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. Subsequently, a group of inspectors appointed by FIFA visits the country to assess whether it meets the necessary requirements to host the event, and a report about the country is issued. The decision on who will host the World Cup is currently made six or seven years before the tournament.

However, there have been occasions where multiple tournaments were announced to be hosted simultaneously in the future, as was the case with the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded to Russia and Qatar, respectively. Qatar became the first Middle Eastern country to host the competition.