FIFA Council officially approved Morocco’s 2026 World Cup bid and the joint US-Mexico-Canada candidature on Sunday at a meeting held in Moscow, FIFA said in a statement.
“The FIFA Council designated the two bids – the one jointly submitted by the Canadian Soccer Association, the Mexican Football Association and the United States Soccer Federation, as well as the one submitted by the Moroccan Football Association – to be voted on by the 68th FIFA Congress,” the statement said.
On Wednesday, the FIFA Congress will vote to give the hosting rights to one of the bids on the table.
FIFA added that it will launch a new bidding procedure if its 68th Congress decided not to choose one of the bids. However, the four associations will not be eligible to submit their applications in case of disqualification.
The decision came ten days after the assessment of the 2026 bid evaluation task force. The task force validated the Moroccan bid with a score of 2.7 out of 5 on June 1. The United 2026 bid got a score of 4 out of 5.
Despite the low score obtained by the Moroccan bid, the country’s bid committee sounds optimistic about Morocco’s chances to host the 2026 World Cup.
The score “is not a matter of concern. Obviously, the main goal was to ensure that we are above the minimum score of 2 out of 5. Today, we have far exceeded this minimum score. We are almost at 3,” CEO of the Moroccan bid committee Hicham El Amrani told French-based Radio France International (RFI) earlier this week.
He also added that the United 2026 score was not surprising as the US has sports facilities ready for the tournament, adding that the goal of a World Cup is to serve as a catalyst for the development of sports.
