Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 FIFA World Cup

The Kingdom has been declared the official host of the 2034 FIFA World Cup.

Saudi will be just the second Middle Eastern nation to host the global football tournament, following the success of Qatar's 2023 World Cup event.

Earlier this month, FIFA made the unexpected decision to open host country bidding with just a 25 day window for nations to express their interest. Hosting such a large sporting event, across numerous locations within a country usually requires extensive budgeting for infrastructure and a number of years of advance planning.

The final date for countries to submit a bid to host this internationally renowned football event was Tuesday evening, October 31. Initially, Australia was the only other country in to enter the bidding process for the 2034 event, but ahead of the bidding deadline, Australian officials announced the country would be opting out of the bidding process.

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The national sports organisation that initially submitted the bid to host the 2034 event issued a statement on Tuesday, clarifying: “Football Australia is ambitious to bring more major tournaments to our shores. We believe we are in a strong position to host the Women’s Asian Cup in 2026 and then welcome the greatest teams in world football for the 2029 Fifa Club World Cup.”

“Having taken all factors into consideration, we have reached the conclusion not to do so (bid) for the 2034 competition,".

During last year's tournament in Qatar, the Saudi Arabian national team made headline across the world for their epic win over Argentina in group stages: Argentina would later go one to become eventual champions of the 2023 FIFA World Cup.

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This December, Jeddah will host the 2023 FIFA Club World Cup, an international men's association football competition supported by FIFA which sees the winners of each confederation's premier competitions come together with the host nation's representative to compete for the coveted trophy.

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