Four years before the opening match of the 2030 World Cup, a battle is already underway over the venue that will host the final.
Co-hosted by Morocco, Spain and Portugal, the tournament will be the first in history to be played across two continents and the second to be jointly organized by three countries, following the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Spain has dominated the media debate for several months. Political figures, football officials and former players have repeatedly presented a final on Spanish soil as an obvious choice, sometimes even speaking as though the matter were virtually settled.
Rafael Louzán, president of the Spanish Football Federation, has made the issue one of his recurring talking points, repeatedly stating that the final will be played in Spain.
Repeated often enough, such certainty could almost be mistaken for an official decision. It is not.
In Morocco, the Hassan II Grand Stadium is continuing to take shape in Benslimane. With a capacity of 115,000 spectators, the venue is one of the Kingdom’s flagship projects for 2030 and has clear ambitions to meet FIFA’s highest requirements and host the tournament’s biggest matches.
Model of the Grand Hassan II Stadium in Benslimane.
State-of-the-art infrastructure, environmentally conscious planning, access and transport systems designed to handle large spectator flows are all part of the future stadium’s plans as it seeks to put forward its case when the time comes to assess the competing venues. That moment, however, does not appear to be imminent.
Behind the numerous Spanish claims, categorical statements and efforts to turn a preference into a fait accompli, one reality remains. The venue for the 2030 World Cup final has not yet been decided.
According to Mundo Deportivo, it may even be necessary to wait until 2028 to know which stadium will host the final match of the 2030 World Cup. The Catalan newspaper, citing its sources, points in particular to the precedent of the 2026 edition, when the choice of MetLife Stadium in the New York-New Jersey area was only officially announced in February 2024, just over two years before the tournament began.
