The 2020 FANA World Cup will be the sixthFANA World Cup, the annual international men's football championship contested by the national football teams of the member associations of FANA. For the first time, the tournament will be jointly hosted by 16 host cities across 4 different countries–Decoria, Dýria, Fordia and Lanovina, also known as "Astonavia".
The 2020 World Cup will also see the tournament expanded from 32 to 48 teams.
A desire to increase the number of participants in the tournament from the previous 32 team format was announced in October 2019. Five expansion options were considered:
Expand to 40 teams (8 groups of 5 teams) – 88 matches
Expand to 40 teams (10 groups of 4 teams) – 76 matches
Expand to 48 teams (opening 32-team playoff round) – 80 matches
Expand to 48 teams (16 groups of 3 teams) – 80 matches
Expand to 48 teams (12 groups of 4 teams) – 104 matches
The option of 48 teams with 12 groups was voted by the FANA Council as the best expansion option.
The tournament will open with a group stage consisting of 12 groups of four teams, with the top two teams progressing from each group, as well as the 8 best scoring 3rd places, making it a total of 32 teams in the knockout tournament. The number of games played overall will increase from 64 to 104, and the number of games played by finalists increased to eight. Each team will play one more group match than under the previous format, due to the additional knockout round.
The draw took place on 22 August 2020, in Lanovina's biggest city, Sarindon. All 48 participating teams were drawn into the 12 groups for the group stage based on the 4 pots that they were divided into. The hosts were allocated to Groups A, D, G and J.
The bidding for the 2020 FANA World Cup started in July 2020 with the national associations having until 31 July 2020 to register their interest in hosting the event. A total of 4 biddings were submitted to FANA for the hosting of the event. For the first time, a bidding consisting of more than 2 countries was submitted, with the Astonavian countries (Decoria, Dýria, Fordia and Lanovina) attempting to host the event. The other 3 bids were from Kergle, Niolskiaj and Qasentria.
The members of FANA started voting on the hosts of the event on 31 July 2020. The results were unveiled on 2 August 2020, with the Astonavian bid securing the hosting rights for the event, while the Niol bid came in second. Fordia became the first country to host two FANA World Cups.
The voting results were:
2020 FANA bidding
Bidders
Result
Votes
%
Astonavia
19
39.58%
Niolskiaj
14
29.17%
Qasentria
11
22.92%
Kergle
4
8.33%
Venues
The event will be hosted in 16 venues across 16 different cities of the four hosting nations. Each country has selected 4 stadiums for the event. Fordia opted to select cities located closer to the Lanovian and Decorian borders, while Dýria was not limited on their host city locations due to being the only country not to border the other host countries. All the hosting countries selected their capital cities as one of their cities of choice (Norfort for Decoria, Dyflinnjaborg for Dýria, Krono for Fordia and Cöhln for Lanovina).
Source: FANA Rules for classification: 1) Higher number of points obtained; 2) Superior goal difference; 3) Higher number of goals scored; 4) Fair play conduct; 5) Position in the FANA ranking system.
Knockout stage
The knockout stage consisted of four stages: the Round of 32, the Round of 16, the quarter-finals, the semi-finals and the final stages. 32 countries were part of the knockout stage: the winners and runner-ups of the 12 groups, as well as the 8 best 3rd-placed teams.
In the knockout stages, if a match was level at the end of normal playing time, extra time was played (two periods of 15 minutes each) and followed, if necessary, by a penalty shoot-out to determine the winners. Below is the bracket for the knockout round of the tournament, teams in bold denote match winners.
As per statistical convention in football, matches decided in extra time are counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by penalty shoot-outs are counted as draws.