The joint hosts for the vast majority of men’s soccer’s FIFA World Cup in 2030 – Spain, Portugal, and Morocco – are combining once more to bid for another FIFA World Cup event.
This time, the trio is set to jointly bid for the 2035 Women’s World Cup (WWC), the Spanish soccer federation (RFRF) has announced today, with none of the countries having ever hosted WWC action before.
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Spain – the defending WWC champions – and Portugal have also never staged the Women’s European Championships. Morocco, however, did stage the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in 2022 and is also set to host the next edition of that event.
Today’s news comes with world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, having previously decided that the 2035 tournament should be hosted in either Europe or Africa.
Bids to host the 2031 and 2035 WWC need to be submitted by the end of 2025 – currently, the US – alongside Mexico – is the favorite to win rights for the 2031 WWC (which must be hosted in either Africa or North/Central America).
At an event in Madrid today (March 28), the president of the RFEF, Rafael Louzan, said (referencing bidding for the 2035 event): “There is no better way to raise the profile of women's sport than by participating in the most important sporting event in the world, a Fifa World Cup. We are currently working on it.”
The showpiece event was last staged in Europe in France, in 2019. It then traveled to Australia and New Zealand two years ago, with Brazil set to host the tournament in 2027.
In terms of alternative bids for the 2035 edition of the WWC, earlier this month, the Football Association (FA) governing bodies of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, collectively known within the UK as the Home Nations, jointly announced their desire to launch a bid. The UK has never previously bid or hosted the event.
The idea has already been publicly supported by the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.
Elsewhere, South Africa has submitted a bid for the WWC in 2031, and may do so again in 2035 again should the US and Mexico win 2031 hosting rights.
It is anticipated that the decisions on the hosts of the 2031 and 2035 Women’s World Cups will be taken at the 76th FIFA Congress in the second quarter of 2026 – the first time that the hosting rights to two editions of the WWC are awarded simultaneously.
For the 2030 World Cup, meanwhile, 20 stadiums (in 17 cities) across Spain, Portugal, and Morocco have applied to stage games from the 48-team event. Of those, a maximum of 12 would engage in capacity-adding work beforehand.
The joint bid was clapped through unopposed at the 2024 FIFA Congress in December, as was the allocation of three games from that tournament to Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay (one each).
