Monday 26 March 2018, 12:04

2026 FIFA World Cup bid books now available 

In line with the approved timeline for the bidding process of the 2026 FIFA World Cup™, FIFA has received the following bid books, which are available on FIFA.com along with their respective executive summaries:

Joint submission by the Canadian Soccer Association, the Mexican Football Association and the United States Soccer Federation

Submission by the Moroccan Football Association

The 2026 Bid Evaluation Task Force will now carry out an assessment process, including visits to the respective member associations. The dates of these visits will be communicated in due course, and the resulting bid evaluation reports, like each step of the bidding process, will be made public.

“I have been dealing with the evaluation of bids for over 20 years, in several different capacities, and I challenge anyone to point out an organisation that conducts a bidding process as fair, objective and transparent as the one that FIFA is carrying out for the 2026 FIFA World Cup,” says FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

“FIFA has been heavily criticised for how it conducted the selection of hosts in the past; it was our obligation to learn from this and leave no room for any doubt or subjectivity. This is why the rules of this process have been clear and objective from the beginning, and they include the highest standards in terms of ethical conduct, participation and commitment to sustainability and human rights. In this context, the role of the 2026 Bid Evaluation Task Force and the principle of ensuring that the bidder(s) retained meet the eligibility criteria to host the biggest single-sport event in the world is a natural consequence of the enhanced process. These are necessary steps to ensure that we never go back to the ‘old ways’.”

A thorough overview of the bidding process and its key principles is available in the Guide to the Bidding Process for the 2026 FIFA World Cup™.

Evaluation of bids Under the bidding regulations that were approved by the FIFA Council in October 2017, FIFA established a bid evaluation model comprising three components:

  • Bid compliance assessment

  • Overall risk assessment

  • Technical evaluation

The “technical evaluation” aspect of this bid evaluation model adopts an objective scoring system to rate and attribute a weight to each of the nine infrastructural and revenue-related criteria set out in clause 3.5 of the Bidding Registration, which is appended to the bidding regulations.

The methodology and application of this scoring system are specified in the document below:

Following the assessment by the 2026 Bid Evaluation Task Force ­– and provided the FIFA Council submits a designation – the decision on whether to select one of the above bidders to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be taken by the 68th FIFA Congress, which will convene in Moscow on 13 June.

The following document, approved by the FIFA Council on 16 March 2018, provides the details of how the 68th FIFA Congress will vote on the matter:

“We are now entering a key stage of this bidding procedure and, as we have always made clear, transparency is of paramount importance. This is why every single step is documented and open to the public: from the submission of the bid books through each round of assessment to the decision-making process,” says FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura.

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