Women’s World Cup to be expanded ahead of UK tournament

9 May 2025, 17:50

The 2035 Women’s World Cup, set to be held in the UK, will feature 48 teams, according to reports

The FIFA Council is understood to have voted on Friday to expand the competition from the 2031 finals onwards.

That tournament is set to be awarded to the United States with support from other nations in the region.

The change does not come as a surprise, with bid documents for the 2031 and 2034 tournaments published in March mentioning the current 32-team format remained “subject to change”.

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The UK is almost certain to host the 2035 finals after FIFA president Gianni Infantino said last month it was the only “valid bid” received.

A formal bid document must be formally submitted in November and evaluated, before a vote to rubberstamp by FIFA Congress in the second quarter of 2026.

The tournament only expanded to 32 teams from 16 in 2023.

There was scepticism over that decision but the finals in Australia and New Zealand threw up plenty of surprises and were very competitive, with only three of the 32 teams failing to register a point.

The decision means that from 2031 the Women’s World Cup will feature the same number of teams as the men’s finals, although there is a proposal from South America to expand the centenary finals in 2030 to 64 teams on a one-off basis, something UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin described last month as a “bad idea”.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has been a strong advocate for expanding the women’s finals to 48 teams, while Football Association president Mark Bullingham said last month the four national associations would be “really comfortable” if the finals were expanded to 48 teams.

That would likely require 16 venues, which Bullingham believes would allow the tournament to create more impact across the four nations.