2014 FIFA World Cup

The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War. The current champions are Spain, who won the 2010 tournament.

On 7 March 2003, FIFA announced that the tournament would be held in South America for the first time since Argentina hosted the competition in 1978, in line with its policy of rotating the right to host the World Cup amongst different confederations. On 3 June 2003, CONMEBOL announced that Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia wanted to host the 2014 World Cup finals. By 17 March 2004, the CONMEBOL associations had voted unanimously to adopt Brazil as their sole candidate.

Brazil formally declared its candidacy in December 2006 and Colombia followed a few days later. The Argentina bid never materialized. On 11 April 2007, Colombia officially withdrew its bid, Francisco Santos Calderón the vice president of Colombia announced that instead Colombia would be hosting the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup. With this development, Brazil became the only official candidate to host the 2014 event. Brazil won the right to host the event on 30 October 2007 as the only country to enter a bid.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup will feature 32 teams. One place was allocated to the hosts, Brazil, but no automatic place is given to the defending champions, Spain. The remaining 31 places will be determined by a qualification process, in which entrants from among the other 207 teams from the six FIFA confederations will compete. Most qualification will be determined within these confederations, with a limited number of inter-confederation play-offs occurring at the end of the process. Brunei, Bhutan, Guam and Mauritania did not enter. As of 31 October 2011, 160 teams remain in contention for 31 remaining qualification places. The originally published schedule would have consisted of 824 qualifying matches, but the withdrawal of the Bahamas and Mauritius means only 816 will be required.

Stadiums