page_title: FIFA World Cup
section_title: Expansion to 32 teams
hierarchical_section_title: FIFA World Cup / History / Expansion to 32 teams
caption_attribution_description: English: Warm-up before the FIFA World Cup 2010 quaterfinal between Uruguay and Ghana, 2 July 2010, Soccer City, JohannesburgУкраїнська: Розминка збірних Уругваю та Гани перед чвертьфіналом чемпіонату світу з футболу 2010, 2 липня 2010, стадіон «Соккер-Сіті», Йоганнесбург Español: De calentamiento antes del cuatro de final de la Copa Mundial de 2010 entre el Uruguay y Ghana, el 2 de julio de 2010, Estadio Soccer City, Johannesburgo
context_page_description: The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War. The current champion is France, which won its second title at the 2018 tournament in Russia.
  The current format involves a qualification phase, which takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase. In the tournament phase, 32 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation, compete for the title at venues within the host nation over about a month.
  The 21 World Cup tournaments have been won by eight national teams. Brazil have won five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. The other World Cup winners are Germany and Italy, with four titles each; Argentina, France, and inaugural winner Uruguay, with two titles each; and England and Spain, with one title each.
context_section_description: The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982, and then to 32 in 1998, also allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. Since then, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, with several having reached the quarter-finals: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; South Korea, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; Ghana, quarter-finalists in 2010; and Costa Rica, quarter-finalists in 2014. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1994, 1998, 2006 and 2018 were all from Europe or South America and so were the finalists of all tournaments so far.
  Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
caption: Interior view of the Soccer City in Johannesburg, South Africa, during a match at the 2010 FIFA World Cup
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