Record Data Sheet
Forty eight teams. A hundred and four matches. One single prize of $50 million. That is what the 2026 World Cup looks like once you stop counting goals and start counting what each federation actually took home.
How the payout works
FIFA confirmed a total prize pool of $871 million for the tournament in April 2026, 65% more than the $440 million paid out at Qatar 2022. Of that total, $655 million is distributed strictly by performance, split into eight fixed tiers. The further a team advances, the more it earns, and every team within a tier earns exactly the same amount.
On top of that performance money, FIFA confirmed that each of the 48 federations also received a fixed preparation fee of $2.5 million before the tournament began, drawn from the rest of the $871 million pool. That part does not depend on how a team performed on the field, so it is not folded into the ranking below, which orders teams purely by their performance based prize.
The ranking, worst to first
33rd to 48th place (eliminated in the group stage):
$9,000,000 each Czechia, South Korea, Qatar, Scotland, Haiti, Turkey, Curacao, Tunisia, Iran, New Zealand, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Panama.
17th to 32nd place (eliminated in the round of 32):
$11,000,000 each South Africa, Australia, Germany, Ivory Coast, Netherlands, Japan, Cape Verde, Austria, Croatia, DR Congo, Sweden, Ecuador, Ghana, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Algeria, Senegal.
9th to 16th place (eliminated in the round of 16):
$15,000,000 each Canada, Paraguay, Brazil, Mexico, Portugal, United States, Egypt, Colombia.
5th to 8th place (eliminated in the quarterfinals):
$19,000,000 each Morocco, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland.
4th place:
$27,000,000 France, after losing the third place match to England 6 4.
3rd place:
$29,000,000 England, who beat France 6 4 in the bronze medal match.
Runner up:
$33,000,000 Argentina, after falling 1 0 to Spain in the final, in extra time.
Champion:
$50,000,000 Spain, world champions for the second time after 2010, beating Argentina in the final on a Ferran Torres goal in the 106th minute.
What this ranking does not include
FIFA’s money is not the only money in play during a World Cup, and it is worth saying so plainly. Beyond this $871 million pool for national federations, FIFA separately distributes another $355 million to the clubs whose players got called up, through its Club Benefits Programme, as FIFA itself confirmed. That money never reaches the national teams. It goes to clubs like Real Madrid or Manchester City for releasing their players during the tournament, so it stays out of this ranking, which only orders what each national team earned.
Sponsorship, ticketing, and broadcast revenue that FIFA collects from the tournament as a whole are also left out here. The $871 million figure is specifically what FIFA chose to redistribute among the 48 participating federations, not the overall business of the World Cup.
The quick read
Spain earned more than the rest of the podium combined. The champion took home $17 million more than the runner up, a bigger gap than the entire prize for a team eliminated in the round of 16. At the other end, sixteen teams, a third of the whole tournament, went home with the exact same amount: $9 million, whether they lost all three group games orwent out on a last minute away goal type finish. In a tournament that raised the total payout by 65% over Qatar 2022, the gap between winning the final and getting knocked out in the semifinals is still, by far, the most expensive jump in all of soccer.
Frequently asked questions
- How much money does FIFA have left after the 2026 World Cup? Under FIFA’s budget for the 2023 to 2026 commercial cycle, the organization expects about $13 billion in total revenue against roughly $12.9 billion in budgeted spending, leaving a surplus of about $100 million added to its reserves. This is a budgeted figure from FIFA itself, not a final closed set of accounts, so treat it as an approximate estimate until the cycle’s final financial report is published.
- What is the minimum guaranteed payout just for taking part? $12.5 million per federation, according to FIFA: a $10 million qualification payment plus a $2.5 million preparation fee, regardless of how the team performed on the field.
- How much did clubs receive for releasing their players? $355 million total, through FIFA’s Club Benefits Programme, up 70% from the $209 million distributed after Qatar 2022.
- What total revenue does FIFA project for the whole 2023 to 2026 cycle? Around $13 billion, up from $7.57 billion in the previous cycle that included Qatar 2022, according to FIFA’s revised budget. This is a budget projection, not a figure that has already closed out.