Media rights for the next two editions of soccer's showpiece FIFA World Cup have hit the market in Spain.

The process covers the 2026 World Cup - to be staged across Mexico, the US, and Canada - as well as the 2030 tournament during which Spain will host a significant number of games (it will split hosting rights for the most part with Portugal and Morocco).

The 2026 tournament will be the first edition of the World Cup to feature as many as 48 teams and 104 matches.

The invitation to tender in Spain went live yesterday (January 14), with a deadline for bid submissions of 10am (Central European Time) on February 18. Interested parties can request the necessary documentation by contacting spain-media-rights@fifa.org.

Spain, Portugal, and Morocco were officially confirmed as joint hosts of the 2030 World Cup in mid-December. The vast majority of games will be split between those three countries, albeit a trio will take place in South America (one each in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay).

The last FIFA World Cup, held in Qatar in late 2022, was covered live in Spain by public-service broadcaster RTVE (a selection of games) and the Movistar Plus pay-TV channel (all the matches).

Rights to that tournament had originally been snapped up in Spain by the Mediapro agency, through a deal disclosed in early 2019.

At that World Cup, Spain was surprisingly eliminated in the round-of-16 stage by Morocco.

The European Championship in mid-2024 - which Spain won - was also shown in that market by RTVE.

FIFA, meanwhile, began the process of finding media rights partners in Germany for its next three World Cups - two men's and one women’s - earlier this month.

The deadline for submission of bids across both those tenders is February 13.

In terms of recent World Cup rights deals, mid-December saw the UK’s BBC and ITV free-to-air broadcasters retain rights to the 2026 and 2030 editions.

Russia's Match TV has also recently unveiled rights, for 2026.