When and where is the next World Cup?
Latest news email updates straight to your inbox Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice  After the European Championship has come and gone this year, the next major football tournament will be the World Cup in the winter of 2022. It will be held in Qatar from November 21 to December 18. This will be the first World Cup to be held in the Arab world and the first in a Muslim-majority country. Moreover, it will also be the first tournament not to be held in May, June, or July, due to the intense heat in Qatar in those months of the year, with four matches due to be played per day. The Qatar tournament will be the shortest World Cup in 44 years, lasting just 28 days. The 1978 edition, in Argentina, lasted 25 days. However having this competition played toward the end of the year caused plenty of controversy. That decision immediately created a major problem for the club game, particularly in Europe, with the season traditionally played from August to May. The final two months of the year are a busy time with plenty of domestic games and group fixtures in the Champions League and Europa League. With the World Cup being played in November and December, league games face a shutdown of at least six weeks - a week before the tournament for preparation and a week after for players to recover - so the 2022-23 season must be changed to allow both competitions to be concluded as smoothly as possible. But this will definitely affect both the start and finish date of the 2022-23 season and potentially the start of the 2023-24 campaign. Furthermore, it will cause problems between clubs and the football federations, of which the former will be flustered and angry at the busy workload that their players will have to endure. There are 55 European nations and qualifying began in March 2021. There are 10 groups of 5 or 6 teams, with qualifying treble headers in March and September to make up for the lost World Cup qualifying dates from June 2021 (the new date for Euro 2020). Regardless of whatever happens, the World Cup is something to look forward to after the Euros. Even if it is still two years away.