The United States will host the 2025 Club World Cup football tournament

GENEVA — The United States will host the Club World Cup in 2025, the first time a FIFA tournament will have 32 teams.

Real Madrid, Manchester City and Chelsea have earned their places as recent Champions League winners for the expanded tournament list which will test stadiums and operations one year before the 2026 World Cup.

The United States will co-host the men's World Cup with Canada and Mexico, and FIFA can still award some Club World Cup matches to those countries.

The Club World Cup will take place in June-July 2025. The United States was selected as the host Friday during the online meeting of the FIFA Council.

FIFA commends the “position of the United States as a proven leader in staging global events and for this enabling FIFA to maximize synergies with the hosting” of the 2026 tournament.

The Seattle Sounders are also on the Club World Cup shortlist as the 2022 champions of CONCACAF North American football region. Americans should get another entry as a host nation.

Tiered European teams have visited the United States for pre-season friendlies for years, but an expanded club tournament will give fans the rare opportunity to see 12 of them play a competitive match.

FIFA said in March the basic qualification path for clubs was to win the continental championship in one of four years from 2021 to 2024 in the five main confederations: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America.

Europe with 12 teams and South America with six are the only continents with more than four teams. Extra places must be awarded according to the ranking of teams with results spanning four years in continental competitions.

The current seven-team Club World Cup for the continental champions which is played every season creates little widespread appeal and FIFA has long wanted to stage a full-size tournament every four years.

This expanded version in 2025 is a huge commercial opportunity for FIFA to try out a new broadcasting model and sign new sponsors, funding hundreds of millions of dollars in prize money for clubs.

The influential European Club Association said in March it expected talks with FIFA about how to manage commercial rights.

The format of the Club World Cup which lasts around three weeks has yet to be decided. One option is to guarantee the 32 teams will play at least three matches each in eight groups of four teams. The eight group winners could then advance to the quarter-finals. That would make for a 56-game tournament if the third-place game was included.

The current format of the annual Club World Cup will continue with the final edition scheduled for December in Saudi Arabia.

Reviving the Club World Cup was a priority for FIFA president Gianni Infantino when he was elected in 2016, but plans for his first project were blocked. The Saudi-linked $25 billion deal with Japanese technology investor SoftBank sparked outrage from European football officials who saw it as covert and overreach by FIFA.

FIFA got approval in 2019 for a 24-team event to be launched in June 2021 in China, but that was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic before commercial details were confirmed.

FIFA is back with plans for a new Club World Cup after a Super League project led by an elite group of clubs quickly fizzled out in April 2021 and caused intense turmoil for European football's governing body UEFA.

The other teams that have already qualified for the 2025 Club World Cup are: Palmeiras (Brazil), Flamengo (Brazil), Monterrey (Mexico), Leon (Mexico), Al-Ahly (Egypt), Wydad Casablanca (Morocco), Urawa Red Diamonds ( Japan ) and Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia).