FIFA to pay clubs who release players for ’26 WC qualifiers
Hundreds more football clubs will get shares of a $355 million FIFA fund from its multi-billion 2026 World Cup revenues for releasing players to men’s national teams.
FIFA said on Tuesday the program which has shared a total of hundreds of millions of dollars among clubs whose players were selected for each World Cup finals tournament since 2010 will now include all players who took part in qualifying games.
Eritrea and Russia — which has been suspended from international football since 2022 — did not play qualifying games among FIFA’s 211 member federations.
“This new approach means that any club that releases a player for a FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifier will now be directly compensated,” FIFA said in a statement.
Clubs that release players for World Cup qualifiers will be compensated for the first time ever, whether or not the player plays at the final tournament.
FIFA previously agreed on a $355m allocation for the 2026 edition in the United States, Canada and Mexico as part of a renewed working agreement with the European Club Association (ECA) signed more than two years ago.
That was an increase from $209m paid to clubs worldwide from each of the past two editions, played in Qatar in 2022 and Russia in 2018.
FIFA said 440 clubs across 51 member countries got payments from the 2022 program, which were calculated as a daily rate for as long as players were involved with their squads at the tournament. Manchester City got the biggest payment with almost $4.6m.
The highest-earning clubs will earn a lower overall share this time because the pool of eligible teams has widened due to FIFA expanding the men’s World Cup to 48 teams from 32, and qualifying games now also included.
More than 900 clubs across all 55 UEFA member countries got payments from a similar European program that already includes qualifying games for national team competitions played for four years through 2024.
FIFA created its “club benefits program” with $40m of revenue from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa as part of a deal with the ECA which was created two years earlier.