The Organisation

The FIFA Congress, the most-critical gathering of international football's governing body, used to assemble every two years. But since 1998, this gathering of the global football family has taken place annually in an extraordinary meeting. The introduction of annual meetings allows ‘football’s parliament’ to influence decisions concerning an ever-growing number of issues.

The Executive Committee consists of a President, elected by the Congress in the year following a FIFA World Cup™, eight vice-presidents and 15 members, appointed by the confederations and associations. Its role includes determining the dates, locations and format of tournaments, electing and dismissing the Secretary-General. The Emergency Committee shall deal with all matters requiring immediate settlement between two meetings of the Executive Committee.

The judicial bodies of FIFA are the Disciplinary Committee, the Appeal Committee and the Ethics Committee. The responsibilities and function of these bodies are stipulated in the FIFA Disciplinary Code and the FIFA Code of Ethics. The decision-making powers of certain committees remain unaffected.

FIFA has also other bodies helping to fulfill its important mission. F-MARC aims to protect players’ health, prevent injury and maximise the health benefits of the game; the Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) is FIFA's body that provides arbitration and dispute resolution on the basis of equal representation of players and clubs and an independent chairman, and 12 FIFA Development Officers have been issued the task of working with Member Associations in identifying and implementing future projects within their respective regions.

In 2011 FIFA has created the Independent Governance Committee and four new task forces and announced a governance reform roadmap towards 2013. The Task Forces mandates came to and end in 2012.