2018 Worldcup

The 2018 FIFA World Cup will be the 21st FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial international football tournament contested by the men's national teams of the member associations of FIFA. It is scheduled to take place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awarded the hosting rights on 2 December 2010. This will be the first World Cup held in Europe since 2006.

The final tournament will involve 32 national teams, which include 31 teams determined through qualifying competitions and the automatically qualified host team. A total of 64 matches will be played in 12 venues located in 11 cities. The final is expected to take place in Moscow at the Luzhniki Stadium.

Apart from Russia, who qualified automatically for the tournament as the hosts, all FIFA member associations were eligible to enter the qualification process.

Myanmar, having successfully appealed against a ban from the competition for crowd trouble during a 2014 World Cup qualifying tie against Oman, were obliged to play all their home matches outside the country.[13] On 12 March 2015, prior to the start of qualification, Zimbabwe were expelled from the tournament for failing to pay former coach José Claudinei.[14] Indonesia were suspended and then expelled before playing a single qualifying match, as part of punishment for government interference in the Football Association of Indonesia.[15]

The qualifying draw took place at the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, Saint Petersburg on 25 July 2015 at 18:00 local time (UTC+3).[16][17][18] Qualifying matches for AFC and CONCACAF started in March 2015, prior to the qualifying draw.[2]

The allocation of slots for each confederation was decided to be unchanged by the FIFA Executive Committee on 30 May 2015 in Zürich, after the FIFA Congress.[19][20]

On 13 May 2016, Gibraltar and Kosovo became FIFA members and eligible for the World Cup qualifying.