The Organising Committee (OC) for FIFA Competitions, chaired by Aleksander Ceferin, met at the Home of FIFA in Zurich today, with the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup™ at the core of the discussions.

One of the topics on the agenda was a proposal to increase the prize money for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019™, which will include preparation money for the first time, as well as funds for a Club Benefits Programme. The details of the package will be further reviewed by the Finance Committee before being put forward for the approval of the FIFA Council, which is due to meet in Kigali on 26 October 2018.

The OC approved the procedures for the Draw for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019, which is due to take place in Paris on 8 December 2018, as follows:

  • The teams will be allocated to pots according to the FIFA/Coca-Cola Women’s World Ranking to be released on 7 December 2018.
  • There will be four pots of six teams, which will be drawn into six groups of four teams. No two teams from the same confederation shall be drawn into the same group, with the exception of the European teams, represented by nine slots.
  • Each group must have at least one, but no more than two, European teams drawn into it: thus, three out of the six groups will have two European teams.

Further, the OC discussed the key lessons learnt from the successful 2018 FIFA World Cup™ and was updated about the status of preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup™.

The OC also took the following decisions regarding upcoming competitions:

  • FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup 2019: the committee recommended that the FIFA Council award the hosting of the competition to Paraguay as the only formal bidder.
  • FIFA Futsal World Cup 2020: the following bids will be submitted to the FIFA Council, which is due to take a decision on the host country in Kigali on 26 October 2018: IR Iran, Japan, Lithuania, New Zealand.

Other topics:

  • Tokyo 2020 – possible participation of the Great Britain women’s football team: FIFA has now received written confirmation from the four British associations, confirming their intention to allow a British women’s team to try to qualify for the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament Tokyo 2020, and that England will be the nominated country to seek a qualification slot for Tokyo 2020 at the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019. This agreement only applies for the women’s, and not the men’s, team.