The amount of support for clubs sending their players to World Cup matches will increase by 70% // Photo: goal.com
Payments under the Club Support Program will increase by 70% compared to the last World Cup. The significant increase is due to two reasons. Firstly, from the next Mundial, payments will also be transferred to those clubs whose players are sent to qualifying matches, not only in the final stage, as it was previously. Secondly, the increase in the number of national teams that will go to the World Cup from 32 to 48 will lead to an increase in the number of players that clubs will be obliged to release to participate in the tournament.
Before the World Cup-2022, held in Qatar, 440 clubs, whose players joined their national teams participating in the championship, distributed among themselves $209 million compensation received from FIFA. The same amount was allocated to 416 clubs that sent their players to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. In 2014, before the Mundial in Brazil, the amount of payments amounted to $70 million, and four years before that in South Africa, when FIFA first began to transfer compensation to clubs – $40 million
In 2023, FIFA signed a memorandum of understanding with the Association of European Clubs, making club support more extensive. “The expanded version of the Club Support Program takes another step forward in financially recognizing the tremendous contribution that many clubs and their players from around the world make to both the qualifying and final tournaments,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
The 2026 World Cup will be held in 16 cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada. For the first time 48 national teams will take part in the tournament.
