The 2026 event will have 48 teams, up from 32, playing a total of 80 games. All three hosts will get automatic places in the finals.





Morocco lost again with its fifth bid campaign in the past 30 years.





Voters were persuaded by promises of record crowds, record revenues and, perhaps crucially, a record $11 billion in profit for FIFA, world football's governing body.

“Thank you for the incredible privilege,” Carlos Cordeiro, the president of US Soccer, said in his acceptance speech, “Football today is the only victor.”





A Fifa evaluation taskforce also judged the US-led bid to be vastly superior to their north African opposition on technical grounds, with a total of 23 stadiums already built or under construction at their disposal. Fifa’s general secretary, Fatma Samoura, pointedly reminded voters of this fact minutes before the ballot.





The relief on the face of the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, was obvious as he congratulated the winning bid team. Fifa clearly preferred the more lucrative and safer United bid. It was the first World Cup vote since 2010 when the Football Association suffered humiliation after Russia won the right to host the 2018 World Cup. Allegations of foul play immediately followed that vote with Qatar winning the 2022 tournament.





The North American proposal had lined up high-profile backers, including soccer star David Beckham, who said that “the World Cup deserves to be in great places,” and U.S. President Donald Trump, who combined support for the bid with a veiled threat to those that planned to vote for competing for offers. “It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the U.S. bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)?” Trump tweeted in April.





The U.S. has put together a STRONG bid w/ Canada & Mexico for the 2026 World Cup. It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the U.S. bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2018

Worried that rivals might try to turn the vote into a referendum on Trump, who is deeply unpopular in many parts of the world, organizers of the North American bid took pains to dissociate their efforts from politics.





“We believe strongly that this decision will be made on its merits,” Cordeiro, the bid leader, told reporters. “This is not geopolitics. We’re talking about football and what is fundamental, at the end of the day, the best interest of football and our footballing community….We’ve had no backlash.”





The three nations, the U.S, Canada and Mexico will bring the tournament to North America for the first time since 1994. The United States will be hosting the majority of the matches including the final.

The bid 'United 2026' from joint North America was selected by the Fifa member nations, winning 134 votes compared to 65 for Morocco. After winning, the members of the winning delegation leaped out of their seats to embrace one another and celebrate the end of a frenzied period of lobbying.In 2010, the U.S. was a finalist to host the 2020 World Cup but lost to Qatar in a vote that was later discredited – but not reversed – because of widespread corruption in FIFA’s ranks.