2019 FIFA Women's World Cup

The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup will be the eighth edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international football championship contested by the women's national teams of the member associations of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) between 7 June and 7 July 2019. In March 2015, France won the right to host the event; the first time the country will host the tournament, and the third time a European nation will. Matches are planned for nine cities across France. The United States enters the competition as defending champions. It will also be the first Women's World Cup to use the video assistant referee (VAR) system.

Host selection
On 6 March 2014, FIFA announced that bidding had begun for the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup. Member associations interested in hosting the tournament had to submit a declaration of interest by 15 April 2014, and provide the complete set of bidding documents by 31 October 2014. As a principle, FIFA preferred the 2019 Women's World Cup and the 2018 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup to be hosted by the same member association, but reserved the right to award the hosting of the events separately.

Initially, five countries indicated interest in hosting the events: England, France, Korea Republic, New Zealand and South Africa. However, the number of bidding nations was narrowed down to two in October 2014, when the French Football Federation and Korea Football Association submitted their official bid documents to FIFA. Both The Football Association and New Zealand Football registered expressions of interest by the April 2014 deadline, but in June 2014 it was announced that each would no longer proceed. The South African Football Association registered an expression of interest by the April 2014 deadline, however later decided to withdraw prior to the final October deadline. Both Japan Football Association and the Swedish Football Association had also expressed interest in bidding for the 2019 tournament, however Japan chose to focus on the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Summer Olympics, whilst Sweden decided to focus on European U-17 competitions instead.

The following countries made official bids for hosting the tournament by submitting their documents by 31 October 2014:
 * 🇫🇷 France
 * 🇰🇷 South Korea

On 19 March 2015, France officially won the bid to host the Women's World Cup and the U-20 Women's World Cup. The decision came after a vote by the FIFA Executive Committee. Upon the selection, France became the fourth country to host both men's and women's World Cup, having hosted the men's twice in 1938 and 1998.

Qualification
The slot allocation was approved by the FIFA Council on 13–14 October 2016. The slots for each confederation are unchanged from those of the previous tournament except the slot for the hosts has been moved from CONCACAF (Canada) to UEFA (France).


 * AFC (Asia): 5 slots
 * CAF (Africa): 3 slots
 * CONCACAF (North, Central America and Caribbean): 3 slots
 * CONMEBOL (South America): 2 slots
 * OFC (Oceania): 1 slot
 * UEFA (Europe): 8 slots
 * Host Nation: 1 slot
 * CONCACAF–CONMEBOL play-off: 1 slot

Qualifying matches started on 3 April 2017, and ended on 1 December 2018.

Qualified teams
A total of 24 teams qualified for the final tournament. Each team's FIFA Rankings in March 2019 are shown in parenthesis.


 * AFC (5 teams)
 * (6)
 * (16)
 * (7)
 * (14)
 * (34)
 * CAF (3 teams)
 * (46)
 * (38)
 * (49)


 * CONCACAF (3 teams)
 * (5)
 * (53)
 * (1)
 * CONMEBOL (3 teams)
 * (37)
 * (10)
 * (39)
 * OFC (1 team)
 * (19)


 * UEFA (9 teams)
 * (3)
 * (hosts) (4)
 * (2)
 * (15)
 * (8)
 * (12)
 * (20)
 * (13)
 * (9)

Chile, Jamaica, Scotland, and South Africa will make their Women's World Cup debuts, while Italy will take part in the event for the first time since 1999 and Argentina will take part in the event for the first time since 2007. Brazil, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, Sweden, and the United States qualified for their eighth World Cup, continuing their streak of qualifying for every World Cup held so far.

Venues
Twelve cities were candidates. The final 9 stadiums were chosen on 14 June 2017; Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes, Stade Marcel-Picot in Nancy, and Stade de l'Abbé-Deschamps in Auxerre were cut.

Three of the stadiums were used at the UEFA Euro 2016: Parc Olympique in Lyon, Allianz Riviera in Nice, and Parc des Princes in Paris. The last of these hosted matches in the 1998 men's World Cup, and stands on the former site of a stadium that hosted matches in the 1938 men's World Cup. Another stadium that was used in 1998 is Stade de la Mosson in Montpellier. The other stadiums seat under 30,000 spectators.

The semi-finals and final will be played at Parc Olympique Lyonnais in the Lyon suburb of Décines, with 58,000 capacity, while the opening match will be played at Parc des Princes in Paris.

Video assistant referees
On 15 March 2019, the FIFA Council approved the use of the video assistant referee (VAR) system for the first time in a FIFA Women's World Cup tournament. The technology was previously deployed at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

Draw
The draw for the final tournament was held on 8 December 2018, 18:00 CET (UTC+1), at the La Seine Musicale on the island of Île Seguin, Boulogne-Billancourt. The 24 teams were drawn into six groups of four teams.

The 24 teams were allocated to four pots based on the FIFA Women's World Rankings released on 7 December 2018, with hosts France automatically placed in Pot 1 and position A1 in the draw. Teams from Pot 1 were drawn first and assigned to Position 1. This was followed by Pot 2, Pot 3, and finally Pot 4, with each of these teams also drawn to one of the positions 2–4 within their group. No group could contain more than one team from each confederation apart from UEFA, which have nine teams, where each group had to contain either one or two UEFA teams.

Squads
Each team have to provide to FIFA a preliminary squad of between 23 and 50 players by 26 April 2019, which shall not be published. From the preliminary squad, the team have to name a final squad of 23 players (three of whom must be goalkeepers) by a yet-to-be announced deadline. Players in the final squad can be replaced by a player from the preliminary squad due to serious injury or illness up to 24 hours prior to kickoff of the team's first match.

Group stage
The match schedule for the tournament was released on 8 February 2018. Following the final draw, seven group stage kick-off times were adjusted by FIFA.

The top two teams of each group and the four best third-placed teams advance to the round of 16.

All times are local, CEST (UTC+2).

Tiebreakers
The ranking of teams in the group stage is determined as follows:


 * 1. Points obtained in all group matches (three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a defeat);
 * 2. Goal difference in all group matches;
 * 3. Number of goals scored in all group matches;
 * 4. Points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
 * 5. Goal difference in the matches played between the teams in question;
 * 6. Number of goals scored in the matches played between the teams in question;
 * 7. Fair play points in all group matches (only one deduction could be applied to a player in a single match):
 * Yellow card: −1 points;
 * Indirect red card (second yellow card): −3 points;
 * Direct red card: −4 points;
 * Yellow card and direct red card: −5 points;
 * 8. Drawing of lots.

Ranking of third-placed teams
The four best third-placed teams from the six groups advance to the knockout stage along with the six group winners and six runners-up.

Knockout stage
In the knockout stage, if a match is level at the end of 90 minutes of normal playing time, extra time will be played (two periods of 15 minutes each), where each team is allowed to make a fourth substitution. If still tied after extra time, the match will be decided by a penalty shoot-out to determine the winner.

Round of 16
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Quarter-finals
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Semi-finals
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Branding
The emblem and slogan was launched on 19 September 2017 at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. The emblem is a form of the FIFA Women's World Cup trophy with the colours of the Flag of France, The stripes of past and present fashion of marine French sailors and the ball of light with eight shards and with the symbol of Fleur-de-lis. The slogan is "Dare to Shine" (French Translated: Le moment de briller).

Mascot
The official mascot named "ettie" was unveiled on 12 May 2018 at the TF1 Group headquarters, and was broadcast on LCI. She made her first public appearance in Paris in front of the iconic Eiffel Tower. FIFA describe her as "a young chicken with a passion for life and football" and state that "she comes from a long line of feathered mascots, and is the daughter of Footix, the Official Mascot of the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France".

Broadcasting rights

 * 🇦🇺 Australia - Optus Sport
 * 🇧🇷 Brazil - Grupo Globo and Rede Bandeirantes. On free-to-air television, for the first time the games of the Brazilian team will be transmitted by Rede Globo, the other games will be transmitted by Rede Bandeirantes. On cable television, the games will be transmitted by Sportv and Band Sports.
 * 🇨🇦 Canada – CTV, TSN, RDS
 * 🇺🇸 United States – FOX, FS1, Telemundo, Universo
 * 🇫🇷 France – TF1 Group, Canal+ Group
 * 🇬🇧 United Kingdom – BBC
 * 🇩🇰 Denmark: DR
 * Europe: EBU

Qualified teams for Summer Olympics
The World Cup will be used by UEFA to qualify three teams for the 2020 Summer Olympic women's football tournament in Japan. If teams in contention for the Olympic spots are eliminated in the same round, ties are not broken by their overall tournament record, and play-offs or a mini-tournament to decide the spots will be held if necessary in early 2020.

For the first time, as per the agreement between the four British football associations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), Great Britain will attempt to qualify for the Olympics through England's performance in the World Cup (a procedure already successfully employed by Team GB in field hockey and rugby sevens). Scotland also qualified for the World Cup but, under the agreement whereby the highest ranked home nation is nominated to compete for the purposes of Olympic qualification, their performance will not be taken into account. In effect, therefore, eight European teams will be competing for three qualification places.


 * 1 Bold indicates champions for that year. Italic indicates hosts for that year.