The 2026 World Cup Just Got 16 More Teams. Some Want It Every 2 Years Too.
The 2026 World Cup schedule is already a record-setter before a single quarterfinal is played. Starting with this edition, the tournament expanded to 48 teams — 16 more than any previous World Cup. The total number of matches jumped from 64 to 104. The tournament runs 39 days, making it the longest World Cup ever held. Norway is back in the knockout rounds for the first time since 1998. Brazil, Haaland, Vinicius Junior — the round of 16 is delivering exactly what an expanded field promised.
That is the story everyone ran with. Here is the part the celebration skipped right past:
The same logic FIFA used to justify going from 32 teams to 48 — more access, more revenue, more global reach — is the exact same logic a faction inside the sport is using to argue the whole tournament should happen twice as often.
What is not in dispute: FIFA carried out a feasibility study into changing the World Cup cycle from four years to two, with continental championships slotted into the alternate years. FIFA earned $5.36 billion in revenue from the 2018 World Cup alone. FIFA leadership ultimately signaled willingness to step away from the two-year plan amid significant pushback.
What is in dispute: whether that pushback was the right call, or whether the 48-team expansion now underway has already cracked the door open wide enough that a biennial cycle is only a matter of time.
On one side, the case for going biennial runs through the same inclusive logic that drove the 2026 expansion. 166 of FIFA's 210 national associations gave their backing to research into the idea. Proponents argue that the quality of a tournament depends on its quality rather than its regularity — and that more frequent editions mean more nations get a genuine shot at the stage. Players would also get more opportunities to win major international tournaments, potentially extending the competitive window of elite careers. The 2026 format itself, with four World Cup debutants including Cape Verde and Uzbekistan, is held up as proof that expansion works.
On the other, the resistance is loud and organized. More than a dozen European nations threatened to quit FIFA if it changed the World Cup to a biennial event. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin cited "grave concerns" and accused FIFA of launching a PR campaign without consulting confederations or national leagues. Critics argue the math cuts against the romance: national federations warn that a crowded schedule would strain players further, and that the event's prestige would be diluted. The most inherent consequence of doubling the frequency is that the tournament's value as a spectacle may suffer — the excitement and buildup to each edition contribute to its uniqueness, and without that same degree of anticipation, it would feel considerably less epoch-making.
The tension is not abstract. Player welfare is already a flashpoint at this 48-team edition, with FIFPRO publicly flagging the expanded calendar's toll on elite players already facing grueling club schedules. FIFA projects revenues exceeding $11 billion for the 2026 cycle — a 47 percent increase over Qatar 2022's $7.5 billion — which tells you exactly how much financial gravity is pulling toward more, not less.
Which leaves the question that the 2026 schedule itself cannot answer, and that no scoreline will settle:
Is a World Cup every two years the natural next step in making the game truly global — or is it just the same revenue logic that gave us 48 teams, dressed up as idealism?
The sport is genuinely split. We dropped the question into the Arena and let the models argue it out. Watch below.