2018 FIFA World Cup

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 the 2006 tournament in Germany, the first ever to be held in Eastern Europe and the eleventh time that it has been held in Europe. All of the stadium venues are in European Russia to keep travel time manageable.

The final tournament will involve 32 national teams, which include 31 teams determined through qualifying competitions and the automatically qualified host team. Of the 32 teams, 20 will be making back-to-back appearances following the last tournament in 2014, including defending champions Germany, while Iceland and Panama will both be making their first appearances at a FIFA World Cup. A total of 64 matches will be played in 12 venues located in 11 cities. The final will take place on 15 July at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.

The winners of the World Cup will qualify for the 2021 FIFA Confederations Cup.

Host selection
The bidding procedure to host the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups began in January 2009, and national associations had until 2 February 2009 to register their interest. Initially, nine countries placed bids for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, but Mexico later withdrew from proceedings, and Indonesia's bid was rejected by FIFA in February 2010 after the Indonesian government failed to submit a letter to support the bid. During the bidding process, the three remaining non-UEFA nations (Australia, Japan, and the United States) gradually withdrew from the 2018 bids, and the UEFA nations were thus ruled out of the 2022 bid. As such, there were eventually four bids for the 2018 FIFA World Cup: England, Russia, Netherlands/Belgium, and Spain/Portugal.

The twenty-two-member FIFA Executive Committee convened in Zürich on 2 December 2010 to vote to select the hosts of both tournaments. Russia won the right to be the 2018 host in the second round of voting. The Spain/Portugal bid came second, and that from Belgium/Netherlands third. England's bid to host its second tournament fell at the first hurdle.

The voting results were as follows:

The process was not without criticism: allegations of bribery on the part of the Russian team and corruption from FIFA members were made particularly by the English Football Association. It was alleged that four members of the executive committee had requested bribes to vote for England, and Sepp Blatter said that it had already been arranged before the vote that Russia would win. The 2014 Garcia Report, an internal investigation led by Michael J. Garcia, was withheld from public release by Hans-Joachim Eckert, FIFA's head of adjudication on ethical matters. Eckert instead a shorter revised summary, and his (and therefore FIFA's) reluctance to publish the full report caused Garcia to resign in protest. Due to such controversy, the FA refused to accept Eckert's absolving of Russia from blame, with Greg Dyke calling for a re-examination of the affair and David Bernstein calling for a boycott of the World Cup.

Qualification
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. On 12 March 2015, prior to the start of qualification, Zimbabwe were expelled from the tournament for failing to pay former coach José Claudinei. 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.

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

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.

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

Qualified teams

 * 1 Bold indicates champion for that year. Italic indicates host for that year.
 * 2 From 1958 to 1990, Russia competed as the Soviet Union.
 * 3 From 1954 to 1990, Germany competed as West Germany.
 * 4: This is the 2nd appearance of Serbia at the FIFA World Cup. However, FIFA considers Serbia as the successor team of the Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro national teams, who between them qualified on 10 occasions.
 * 5: No official third place match took place in 1930 and no official third place was awarded at the time; both United States and Yugoslavia lost in the semi-finals. However, FIFA lists the teams as third and fourth respectively using the overall records of the teams in the tournament.
 * 6: In 1978, the second round was another group stage which involved 8 teams qualified from the first round.

Draw
All teams were allocated into four pots based of FIFA World Rankings of October 2017. The hosts, Russia was automatically assigned to position A1. Teams from same confederation were not drawn into the same group, with an exception for teams from UEFA where each group contained up to two teams.

The draw was held on 1 December 2017 at Kremlin, Moscow.

Squads
Each team must first name a preliminary squad of 30 players. From the preliminary squad, the team must name a final squad of 23 players (three of whom must be goalkeepers) by the FIFA deadline. Players in the final squad may be replaced due to serious injury up to 24 hours prior to kickoff of the team's first match, where the replacement players do not need to be in the preliminary squad.

For players named in the 30-player preliminary squad, there is a mandatory rest period between 21 and 27 May 2018, except for those involved in the 2018 UEFA Champions League Final played on 26 May.

Referees
On 16 March 2018, the FIFA Council approved the use of video assistant referees (VAR) for the first time in a FIFA World Cup tournament.

On 29 March 2018, FIFA released the list of 36 referees and 63 assistant referees selected to oversee matches. On 30 April 2018, FIFA released the list of 13 video assistant referees, who will solely act as VARs in the tournament. On 30 May 2018, Saudi referee Fahad Al-Mirdasi was banned for life over match fixing, and he and his two assistant referees, Mohammed Al Abakry and Abdulah Alshalwai, were removed. A new referee was not appointed, but two assistant referees, Hasan Almahri of United Arab Emirates and Hiroshi Yamauchi of Japan, received appointments.

Venues


Russia proposed the following host cities: Kaliningrad, Kazan, Krasnodar, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Saint Petersburg, Samara, Saransk, Sochi, Volgograd, Yaroslavl, and Yekaterinburg. All the cities are in or just outside European Russia to reduce travel time for the teams in the huge country. The bid evaluation report stated: "The Russian bid proposes 13 host cities and 16 stadiums, thus exceeding FIFA's minimum requirement. Three of the 16 stadiums would be renovated, and 13 would be newly constructed."

In October 2011 Russia decreased the number of stadiums from 16 to 14. Construction of the proposed Podolsk stadium in the Moscow region was cancelled by the regional government, and also in the capital, Spartak Stadium was competing with Dynamo Stadium over which would be constructed first.

The final choice of host cities was announced on 29 September 2012. The number of cities was further reduced to 11 and number of stadiums to 12 as Krasnodar and Yaroslavl were dropped from the final list.

Sepp Blatter stated in July 2014 that due to concerns over the completion of venues in Russia, the number of venues for the tournament may be reduced from 12 to 10. He also said, "We are not going to be in a situation, as is the case of one, two or even three stadiums in South Africa, where it is a problem of what you do with these stadiums".

In October 2014, on their first official visit to Russia, FIFA's inspection committee and its head Chris Unger visited St Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan and both Moscow venues. They were satisfied with the progress.

On 8 October 2015, FIFA and the Local Organising Committee agreed on the official names of the stadiums used during the tournament.

Schedule
The full schedule was announced by FIFA on 24 July 2015 (without kick-off times, which will be confirmed later). Russia will be placed in position A1 in the group stage and play in the opening match at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on 14 June, which will also host the second semi-final on 11 July and the final on 15 July. The Zenit Arena in Saint Petersburg will host the first semi-final on 10 July and the third place match on 14 July.

Group stage
The top two teams of each group advance to the round of 16. Matches are played on a round-robin basis.

Tiebreakers
The rankings of teams in each group are determined as follows (regulations Article 32.5):


 * 1.points obtained in all group matches;
 * 2.goal difference in all group matches;
 * 3.number of goals scored in all group matches;

If two or more teams are equal on the basis of the above three criteria, their rankings are determined as follows:


 * 4.points obtained in the group matches between the teams concerned;
 * 5.goal difference in the group matches between the teams concerned;
 * 6.number of goals scored in the group matches between the teams concerned;
 * 7.fair play points
 * first yellow card: minus 1 point;
 * indirect red card (second yellow card): minus 3 points;
 * direct red card: minus 4 points;
 * yellow card and direct red card: minus 5 points;
 * 8.drawing of lots by the FIFA Organising Committee.

All times listed are local time.

Knockout stage
In the knockout stages, if a match is level at the end of normal playing time, extra time is played (two periods of 15 minutes each) and followed, if necessary, by a penalty shoot-out to determine the winners.

If a match goes into extra time, each team will be allowed to make a fourth substitution, the first time this has been allowed in a FIFA World Cup tournament.

Branding
The tournament logo was unveiled on 28 October 2014 by cosmonauts at the International Space Station and then projected onto Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre during an evening television programme. Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said that the logo was inspired by "Russia's rich artistic tradition and its history of bold achievement and innovation", and FIFA President Sepp Blatter stated that it reflected the "heart and soul" of the country. For the branding, a typeface called Dusha (from Душа, Russian for soul) was created by Portuguese design agency Brandia Central in 2014.