What is FIFA, and who actually runs world soccer?
For a lot of fans, FIFA is a video game first
Fair enough — for about thirty years the best-selling soccer game on earth carried those four letters. But the name was rented. EA licensed “FIFA” the way a stadium sells naming rights, and in 2022 the two sides fell out over the price. FIFA 23 was the last game under that name; from September 2023 the same series has been called EA Sports FC — same leagues, same players, different badge on the box.
That divorce is actually the cleanest way to understand what FIFA is. It isn't a game and it isn't a team. It's a governing body whose initials were valuable enough to lease out for three decades.
What FIFA actually runs — and what it doesn't
- It runs: the men's and women's World Cups, the Club World Cup, the international match calendar (those weeks your club loses players), and the global rulebook for transfers and who's eligible to play for which country.
- It does not run: the Premier League, La Liga, MLS or any other domestic league — those answer to their own national associations and league bodies.
- It does not run the Champions League. That's UEFA's, Europe's confederation. A very common mix-up.
- It does not even write the rules. More on that below — it's the best trivia on this page.
The chain of command
Soccer's org chart is a pyramid, same as everything else on this site. It's drawn at the bottom of this page as a live map — hover any box to trace its lines, click it for the briefing — but here it is in words:
- FIFA — global, 211 member associations.
- Six confederations — the continents: UEFA (Europe), Concacaf (North/Central America and the Caribbean), CONMEBOL (South America), AFC (Asia), CAF (Africa) and OFC (Oceania). They run their own club tournaments — the Champions League is UEFA's, the Libertadores is CONMEBOL's.
- National associations — U.S. Soccer, England's FA, Mexico's FMF. They run their country's national teams and sanction its leagues.
- Leagues and clubs — where the weekly games actually happen.
A very short history
FIFA was founded in Paris in 1904 by seven European associations — France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Britain, which had invented the modern rules, pointedly didn't join at first.
The first World Cup came in 1930, in Uruguay, with 13 teams — several European sides skipped it rather than take a three-week boat ride. The tournament grew slowly, then explosively: under president João Havelange (1974–1998) FIFA added dozens of members, expanded the World Cup, and turned it into a television and sponsorship business. Sepp Blatter followed him, and ran FIFA from 1998 to 2015.
The 2015 scandal, briefly
You can't explain FIFA honestly and skip this. In May 2015, days before FIFA's annual congress, Swiss police arrested officials at a Zurich hotel at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, which unsealed a 47-count indictment. The charges were racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering — roughly $150 million in bribes over two decades, largely tied to who got the media and marketing rights to tournaments.
Dozens of officials were ultimately indicted and many were convicted. Blatter announced within days that he would step down, and FIFA's own ethics committee later banned him — along with UEFA president Michel Platini — for eight years over a payment it judged improper. FIFA passed reforms afterward (term limits, published salaries, a split between governance and management). Whether those went far enough is still argued about, loudly.
Who's in charge now
Gianni Infantino, a Swiss lawyer and UEFA's former general secretary, has been FIFA president since February 2016. The structure under him:
- The FIFA Congress — all 211 member associations, and here's the part that matters: one country, one vote. Fiji's vote counts exactly as much as Brazil's. It elects the president and picks World Cup hosts.
- The FIFA Council — the smaller board that runs things between congresses, with seats allocated across the six confederations.
- The administration — the professional staff, headquartered in Zurich.
That one-country-one-vote rule explains a lot of soccer politics. Win over enough small federations and you win the room, no matter what the giant football nations think.
The plot twist: FIFA doesn't write the rules
The Laws of the Game belong to the IFAB — the International Football Association Board — which was founded in 1886, eighteen years before FIFA existed. It has eight votes: FIFA holds four, and England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland hold one each. Changing a law takes six of the eight.
Do that math and something great falls out: FIFA cannot change a rule by itself — it needs at least two of the four British associations. And the British four can't do it without FIFA. Every offside tweak and every VAR adjustment has to clear that room.
What's changing right now
- The World Cup got bigger. The 2026 edition across the USA, Canada and Mexico was the first with 48 teams, up from 32 — which is why more countries than ever qualified.
- 2030 is a three-country, two-continent event. Morocco, Portugal and Spain host, with three centenary matches played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay to mark 100 years since that first 1930 tournament.
- 2034 goes to Saudi Arabia — the first 48-team World Cup staged inside a single country.
- The Club World Cup expanded to 32 clubs, with the USA hosting the first big version in 2025.
Leadership and hosting facts above are current as of July 2026.