By Pedro Contreras Gonzalez, Travel Coordinator, Adler Marlow

My team has always been Real Madrid. That comes from my father. He supported them, and it stayed with me, the way these things do when they are handed down rather than chosen. So when FIFA confirmed in December 2024 that the 2030 World Cup would be played across Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, and that Madrid would be one of the host cities, it landed differently than a piece of sporting news normally does.

The tournament runs from 8 June to 21 July 2030. Roughly twenty stadiums across seventeen cities in three countries, and for the first time in the competition's history it will be staged across three continents in the same summer. I have worked in hospitality for over twenty years, most of it in this part of the world. I have never seen anything on the horizon quite like this.

Why football and hospitality have always been connected for me

In 2011 I was living in Manchester and worked at the Hilton Manchester Deansgate and I was in charge of looking after a local Premier League team during their stays with us. There were several South American and Spanish players in the squad at the time, which meant I was often the person they could speak to in their own language.

One memory has stayed with me more than any other. One of the Argentine players worked out that I was going to be spending Christmas on my own that year. He invited me to spend it with his family. I would rather not name him, and it does not matter who he was. What matters is that a footballer at the top of the game noticed that someone working in his hotel had nowhere to go, and did something about it.

I think about that when people talk about football as a business. It is a business. It is also, still, a thing that puts people in a room together who would never otherwise have met. That is the part of 2030 I am most interested in.

Malaga: the city that was in the bid and is not in the tournament

I am from Malaga and my city was in the original bid. However, it is not in the tournament. The city withdrew in July 2025 because the timescales around rebuilding La Rosaleda did not work.

There is some disappointment in that, naturally. I am always happy when Malaga does well, and this would have been a significant thing for the city. But withdrawing was the right call rather than a failure. A stadium rebuild on a World Cup deadline is an enormous undertaking, and getting it wrong would have been considerably worse than stepping back.

It also says something useful about where this tournament currently stands. Four years out, the list of host cities is still moving. Malaga was in it and is now not. That is worth remembering when you read any article, including this one, that presents the venue list as settled.

What has actually been confirmed

FIFA confirmed the hosting at an Extraordinary Congress on 11 December 2024. The decision was made by acclamation rather than a competitive vote, because the joint Morocco, Portugal, and Spain bid, known as Yalla Vamos 2030, was the only candidate.

What is settled: the three host countries, the tournament window of 8 June to 21 July 2030, a forty-eight team format, and the inclusion of three centenary matches in South America to mark one hundred years since the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930.

What is not settled: the final venue list. Twenty-three stadiums were put forward in the bid. FIFA is expected to ratify the definitive list around December 2026. Until then, every venue below should be read as provisional.

The shape of the tournament

The structure is unlike any World Cup before it. Three matches open the tournament in South America on 8 and 9 June: one in Uruguay at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo, where the 1930 final was played, and one each in Argentina and Paraguay. Then the tournament moves to Morocco, Spain, and Portugal.

Spain carries the largest share with eleven provisional venues across nine cities. Morocco has six stadiums in six cities. Portugal has three stadiums across two cities. Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon are each expected to use two stadiums.

Spain: the largest share

The Spanish venues in the bid span the country from Galicia to the Canary Islands. Madrid is expected to use both the Santiago Bernabeu, which hosted the 1982 final and has since been rebuilt with a retractable pitch and roof, and the Metropolitano. Barcelona brings the renovated Spotify Camp Nou and the RCDE Stadium in Cornella. Beyond the two largest cities, the provisional list includes Seville, Bilbao, Zaragoza, A Coruna, Las Palmas, and San Sebastian.

Bilbao is the one I think could genuinely surprise international visitors. It has such a strong identity and culture of its own, and it is not a city most people arrive in with fixed expectations. That tends to produce the best trips.

But the thing I most want people to understand about Spain hosting is not really about the stadiums. It is about what happens to a Spanish city on a match day. The atmosphere spills far beyond the ground. The streets, the bars, the restaurants, all of it becomes part of the event. You do not need a ticket to be inside the experience. In Spain, the city itself is the venue.

Portugal: Lisbon and Porto

Portugal's contribution is the most concentrated of the three: three stadiums across two cities. Lisbon is expected to use both the Estadio da Luz and the Estadio Jose Alvalade. Porto brings the Estadio do Dragao. All three are established venues that have hosted European finals and international football at the highest level, which means Portugal arrives at 2030 with less construction pressure than its co-hosts.

For travelers, the concentration is an advantage. Lisbon and Porto are around three hours apart by train, both are compact enough to explore properly in a few days, and the surrounding country, the Douro valley easily reachable from Porto, with Alentejo, and the Algarve coast sitting within comfortable reach of Lisbon.

Morocco: a first-time host with the biggest stadium

Morocco is the story of this tournament. It will be the second African nation to host a World Cup, and it is building the most ambitious stadium of the entire competition to do it. The Grand Stade Hassan II on the outskirts of Casablanca is projected to hold 115,000 people, which would make it the largest stadium at the tournament and one of the largest in the world. It is widely expected to host the final, though FIFA has not confirmed that.

The other Moroccan venues are spread across the country: Rabat, Marrakech, Tangier, Fez, and Agadir. The Ibn Battuta Stadium in Tangier, named after the fourteenth-century Tangier-born explorer, is already one of the most modern stadiums in Africa. Marrakech's ground sits on the edge of the city with the Atlas Mountains behind it.

From coordinating travel in Morocco, the thing I think visitors will be least prepared for is the hospitality. Marrakech in particular. You can find yourself welcomed into someone's home, into a family, very quickly and with no sense that you are being hosted as a guest rather than treated as one. People who arrive for football are going to leave with something else entirely.

What is still to be decided

The final venue, most significantly. The two realistic candidates are the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid and the Grand Stade Hassan II in Casablanca, and the decision carries weight beyond logistics: a final in Casablanca would be only the second World Cup final ever held in Africa.

Also unconfirmed: the full match schedule, which cities host which stages, and whether the tournament expands from forty-eight teams to sixty-four, a proposal that has been discussed but not adopted. All of this is expected to become clear through 2027 and 2028.

What this means if you are planning to travel

Four years sounds like a long time. For a tournament of this scale across three countries, it is not.

My advice is simple and I would give the same advice to anyone. Book early, and do not try to do too much. Those two things matter more than anything else.

The second one is where people most often go wrong. If you want to attend matches in different cities, or different countries, give yourself at least two or three nights in each place. Anything less and you spend the trip in transit, arriving somewhere, going to a stadium, and leaving again without ever having been there. Three matches properly experienced will stay with you far longer than six matches rushed.

On booking: accommodation in host cities during the tournament window will be under pressure these cities have never experienced simultaneously. Spain and Portugal already run close to capacity in June and July. Morocco's cities fill in summer. A World Cup on top of an ordinary European summer is a different order of demand.

Beyond the stadiums

I feel strongly about this one. The football should be the reason you come. It should not be the only thing you experience.

A match is two hours. A tournament trip is a week or more. What you do with the rest of it is what you will actually remember. For example, we can arrange a day spent cooking with a local grandmother, five or six hours learning dishes that have been made the same way for generations. You come away with a connection to the place that no stadium can give you, and an understanding of something you did not understand when you arrived.

Several of the host cities are places we already design journeys around, and a match day gives you a reason to be somewhere you can then properly explore.

Madrid, where a local art historian can take you inside private collections that are not open to the general public. Barcelona, a gateway to some of Spain's most spectacular wine country, with Penedès under an hour away and the terraced slopes of Priorat within a morning's drive. Bilbao, where the Basque relationship with food is best understood standing at a bar with a glass of txakoli, not sitting in a restaurant. Porto, and the Douro valley behind it, where the port houses have been run by the same families for generations. Tangier, where an artisan can walk you through the making of a pair of leather babouches and then have you design your own.

The tournament is the reason to come. The region is the reason to stay.

How to start thinking about it now

Nothing needs booking today. The schedule does not exist yet and the venues are not final. But the thinking can start.

Decide which of the three countries interests you most, because that will shape everything else. Watch for the FIFA venue ratification around December 2026 and the qualification draws that follow. And when the schedule does arrive, be ready to move quickly. The gap between a schedule announcement and the disappearance of good accommodation in host cities will be measured in days, not months.

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