Prime Minister Andy Burnham is exploring a bid to host the men’s World Cup in the UK, alongside plans for a Northern Olympics, The i Paper can reveal.
The move would bring the World Cup back to the UK for the first time since England hosted in 1966 and forms part of a growing push by Burnham to use major sporting events to drive investment, tourism and regeneration beyond London.
Burnham told colleagues at a Friday morning meeting at No 10 North in Manchester that he is looking at how Britain could host the tournament and is already in talks with the nation’s footballing bodies about how a campaign could be delivered.
A source familiar with the discussions said the bid was raised as part of talks on “stadium regeneration”.
Hosting the world’s biggest football tournament would form part of his push to make the north a destination for global sport – an agenda that also includes plans for a Northern Olympics and a bid to bring the 2035 Ryder Cup to Bolton.
The next available World Cup is in 2038, followed by tournaments in 2042 and 2046. FIFA has yet to begin the formal process for awarding the 2038 tournament, and the Government has not said whether its ambitions are focused on the earliest available opportunity or a bid further into the future.
The World Cup plan is being considered alongside the previously reported ambition to bring the Olympics to the north, with Burnham understood to be pursuing both projects as part of a wider push to attract major sporting events, investment and tourism to the regions.
Burnham has already made clear just how strongly he feels about the UK’s absence from the tournament. Earlier this month he agreed that it was “insane” that the country that invented modern football has hosted the men’s World Cup only once, in 1966.
“It makes you wonder whether the authorities at the European and global level have something against us,” he told the Ellis Platten, host of the Away Days podcast.
“The country that invented the game, you’d think we would have had a bit more of that attention.”
His frustration is rooted partly in personal experience. As culture media secretary under Gordon Brown, Burnham was involved in England’s failed bid for the 2018 World Cup, which was awarded to Russia after England received just two votes from Fifa’s 22-strong executive committee.
He has since become an outspoken critic of football’s governing bodies. In recent weeks he has called Fifa president Gianni Infantino the “wrong man” to lead the organisation and attacked plans to sell a stake in a new commercial business built around Fifa’s competitions.
That proposal was subsequently abandoned after a furious backlash from European football authorities.
The latest World Cup thinking is closely linked to Burnham’s other major sporting ambition to bring the Olympics to the north.
A coalition of northern mayors has been pressing for a multi-city Olympic and Paralympic bid, arguing that the Games should be used to rebalance the distribution of major events and investment away from London.
Burnham has said it would not be “fair or right” for London to host the Olympics for a fourth time and has backed a Northern Games as “what Britain needs right now”. Northern leaders have argued that much of the infrastructure is already in place and that a Games could accelerate investment and regeneration across a region of around 15 million people.
Burnham is already backing the bid to bring the Ryder Cup to Bolton and is enthusiastic about Euro 2028, which will be hosted across the UK and Ireland.
A source close to the Prime Minister said: “He is behind the Olympic bid and was the driving force in persuading us to back the bid to bring the Ryder Cup to Bolton.
“He’s excited about the Euros 28, which we’re hosting.”
The source said Burnham was keen to support hospitality and tourism, although the detail of how a World Cup bid would fit into that had not yet been worked out.
The hurdles Burnham would face to host World Cup
Kat Lucas, Football News Editor
The Prime Minister’s proposal already faces a major stumbling block. Fifa’s rotation rules prevent countries from a continental federation – such as Uefa, which governs European football – hosting a World Cup if another nation from that continent has hosted either of the previous two tournaments.
The 2030 edition is already being co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco under a joint bid from Uefa and the Confederation of African Football, with additional matches held in South America to mark 100 years since the first World Cup. That would appear to rule out a UK bid until 2042, but Fifa can make an exception if no other valid bids are made – with nations having to prove they meet specific requirements around finances, stadiums and other infrastructure.
As it stands, only the the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football – which hosted this summer’s tournament – and the Oceania Football Confederation would be eligible.
Australia are seen as strong contenders for 2038 after pulling out of the 2034 bidding process, which effectively allowed Saudi Arabia a free run as the sole bidder.
Burnham has called on the current Fifa president Gianni Infantino to resign, but the governing body would be under new leadership by the mid-2030s regardless due to limits on the number of terms allowed.
A UK bid for 2042 would be more realistic but the process has not yet begun for nations to express an interest and hosts would be unlikely to be appointed until well into the 2030s.
The World Cup idea was raised against the backdrop of a broader push by Burnham to put mayors at the centre of decisions on regional growth.
Today’s meeting was the first virtual “situation room” held through No10 North, his new base for bringing Whitehall and local leaders together, and was focused on giving mayors more power, expertise and resources to deliver investment in their areas.
The meeting brought together mayors from across England with the PM, Chancellor John Healey, First Secretary of State Louise Haigh, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner and Housing Minister Sally Jameson, with Exchequer Secretary Dan Tomlinson and other regional leaders joining remotely.
Alongside the wider devolution measures, the Government announced a new Stadium Regeneration Accelerator, under which the Ministers for Growth and Sport will work with mayors on major sports projects designed to unlock jobs, investment and housing. The Government also said every mayoral authority would initially receive between five and ten civil servants on six-to-nine-month secondments, while new programmes will expand local access to leadership, data and AI expertise.
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