Next July a new edition of the event will begin. However, in Spain our eyes are already on 2030 and, above all, on the final. This will be the first time in history that three countries from two different continents organize this tournament, Spain, Morocco and Portugal. The challenge is for the hosts to agree to host all the matches they must organize. Many eyes, of course, are on the final. The Santiago Bernabéu, in Madrid, and also the Hassan II stadium, which Morocco is building at full speed on the outskirts of Casablanca, are proposed to host it. Barcelona now joins the fight. The mayor of the Catalan capital, Jaume Collboni, to host the 2030 World Cup final.
“Barcelona has always had a great ambition to host major sporting events. A few days ago, I expressed to President Rafael Louzán of the Royal Spanish Football Federation that the city would be very excited, and we will be prepared, to be able to host the 2030 World Cup final,” said Collboni at the Grand Gala of Sports World. “It would be at the Camp Nou. As FIFA has said, it is a competitive field. This will be decided by FIFA, but I have already conveyed our hope of being the venue,” he added.
and it is scheduled to be completed in December 2027. Once completed, it will have 105,000 seats available, which will allow it to be the field with the largest capacity in all of Europe. However, despite Collboni’s wishes to host the World Cup final, it will not be an easy fight. The Santiago Bernabéu candidacy has a lot of weight. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, already said it at the time, when she stated in an assembly in 2023: “Today we wake up with new, very good news for Madrid, that the 2030 World Cup final will have our region, our capital, as the stage, the Santiago Bernabéu.” Since then, there has been no progress. The decision and the announcement also correspond to FIFA.
The Spanish capital already hosted the final of the 1982 World Cup 48 years ago, when Italy beat Germany 3 goals to 1. In that edition, furthermore, the Camp Nou was in charge of celebrating the inaugural confrontation between Argentina and Belgium, which the Belgians ended up winning by the minimum thanks to Vandenbergh’s goal in the 62nd minute. The match was followed by nearly 100,000 spectators and 1.6 billion television viewers, who were able to see a young Diego Armando Maradona, who had signed for Barça just nine days ago.
“Spain is prepared to host the final and ours is the country, with 55%, that has the greatest weight in the organization and the one that has led the candidacy,” on Thursday at the presentation of ElPozo Alimentación as the new sponsor of the Federation. These statements were not liked at all in Morocco and Mohamed Makrouf, spokesperson for the Moroccan Federation, stated in the Saudi newspaper Occurrence: “It is completely false. The venue for the 2030 World Cup final will be decided in a joint meeting that will include the parties involved: Spain, Morocco and Portugal and the main one, which is FIFA. And that meeting has not yet taken place.”
Indeed, Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, recently congratulated Morocco for organizing the African Cup last January. The country will also host the Club World Cup in 2029 and has the U-17 Women’s World Cup guaranteed for the next two years, which reinforces its growing weight on the international calendar. In parallel, in Casablanca the construction of the future Hassan II stadium is progressing, destined to become the home of the Moroccan national team and the two big clubs in the city, Wydad and Raja. The construction, scheduled for 2028, will have a capacity for 115,000 spectators, which will make it the largest football stadium in the world, surpassing the May Day Rungrado in Pyongyang. With an infrastructure of this magnitude, Morocco aspires to host other major matches of the tournament beyond, also, the opening match, which will be held at the Centenario stadium in Montevideo (Uruguay), to commemorate 100 years since the first World Cup, in 1930.
Barça also wants the 2029 Champions League final
Simultaneously, Barça announced this Tuesday its request to host the Champions League final in 2029. This statement came a few hours after the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Barcelona City Council made public their support for the initiative and where they added that “the formalization of the final candidacy and the delivery of the complete dossier, with all the necessary documentation to qualify to host the final, is scheduled for early June 2026.”
