Goal 7. Provide FIFA Member Associations with new international match opportunities for their national teams and clubs

National teams had new opportunities to hone their skills in matches against teams from other confederations in March 2024 when FIFA launched the FIFA Series as part of its sizeable investment in national team football. Twenty-four teams took part in the inaugural edition that gave hosting opportunities to five MAs, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. The 2026 edition will see double the number of countries take part with 12 groups of four teams hosted by 11 FIFA MAs with three venues, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire and Thailand, hosting women’s teams for the very first time.

The FIFA Series is just part of a broad spectrum of tournament expansions that bring more countries and clubs together on the global stage with the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 the outstanding example in men’s football. A number of new tournaments were added to the palette of the women’s game (see Goal 8) as well as the expansion to 16 teams of the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament long-advocated by FIFA.

In addition to the FIFA Series, FIFA’s support of regional tournaments for national teams continues in various guises. The renewal in October 2025 of the Memorandum of Understanding with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) includes the creation of the FIFA ASEAN Cup, a regional tournament that will bring together all FIFA MAs from the Southeast Asia region, in a format that follows in the footsteps of the successful FIFA Arab Cup. The latter had a successful second edition under FIFA auspices in 2025 with further editions confirmed for 2029 and 2033.

Qatar requested to host those three editions to make best use of the top-level FIFA World Cup 2022 facilities, which are also the centrepiece of the five editions of the FIFA U-17 World Cup held in the Gulf state from 2025 to 2029. But FIFA has sought to widen the group of countries hosting its tournaments in order to boost football infrastructure globally as well as give MAs an opportunity to accumulate organisational experience.

The FIFA Futsal World Cup 2024™ was the first FIFA tournament in Uzbekistan and the first to be staged in Central Asia, while the Seychelles became global tournament hosts for the first time in 2025 and the first African country to stage the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup™. Brazil will set a new standard for South America in 2027 as the first hosts of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which will build on the momentum of the first 32-team tournament in 2023 before it expands to 48 teams for the 2031 edition. Morocco will be only the second African country to host a FIFA World Cup when they join Spain and Portugal in staging the unique centenary celebration of the tournament that will also see games played in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. The North African nation will accrue invaluable tournament-hosting experience before that as it stages the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup™ annually from 2025 to 2029.