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This edition covers:

The massive news that went out November 20th from FIFA was the ability to put a $500 deposit down for hospitality tickets. The deposit would grant “priority access” to hospitality. Those that subscribed to this newsletter prior to November 20th received an ad-hoc email alert. I hope to do the same for future announcements as benefit for subscription.

Previously, we detailed an article we found saying that there’d be 1M out of 7M tickets dedicated to hospitality. It will certainly be interesting to see if this allocation is honored as there’s zero doubt that this tournament will be the highest ticket sales for hospitality across a World Cup.

I posted more details on our website regarding (1) Hospitality Tickets (2) How Qatar 2022 Hospitality Was Priced and (3) Other Package Providers. I recommend you read that for more info.

You can also access On Location’s site directly by clicking here. On Location is the official Hospitality Ticket Provider, if you’re new to this newsletter.

Note on Hospitality Vendors: It is tricky because On Location can subcontract out to other vendors the ability to sell hospitality, but those providers will essentially be going through the same process that you can go through on the site directly. I have thought about applying to officially provide hospitality tickets but decided against it (someone always asks).

I’ve been asked about Volunteer opportunities and each host city will handle its volunteer network. Initially, I planned on linking to every specific host city volunteer section but to my surprise, the vast majority do not have information yet on volunteering. More surprisingly, a couple Host Cities are linking out to a Facebook page for their official site.

That said, I went ahead and linked out to the official pages, per FIFA, below for each Host City. Some have info on Volunteering, others are already offering ways to get involved if you’re in charge of a business and want to partner, some have jobs posted, etc. I’ll post more details for cities in the future, when there’s more concrete items to post.

FIFA announced more “Team Base Camps” (i.e. training site + hotel) across North America for the 2026 World Cup.

As expected, more college towns were added to the list. Not expected though - a high school!

It’s interesting how different this is compared to the Official Bid Book submitted in 2018. I find the training facilities and hotel decisions to be interesting. I don’t know why. I think I enjoy the difference in strategies on whether a team decides to isolate themselves vs another team that prefers to be in the midst of the chaos and if that impacts performance.

I provide some insights and a personal memory from 2014 Brazil in this longer article. There’s more to the story but my wife is still mad at me for abandoning her at the beaches of Ipanema while I watched the Dutch team train in my apartment…but I’d make the same exact decision today. 😅

First and foremost, the CLUB World Cup is NOT the real “World Cup”. Yes, I had to say that. 😀

Botafogo became the 32nd and last club to qualify for the World Cup on November 30th. It was actually a dramatic final as Botafogo went down a man in the 1st minute (!) of the match and still won.

Additionally, the draw for this event, which also takes place across the US and may serve as a dry run for parts of the logistical planning for 2026, is Thursday, December 5th. It can be streamed live on FIFA.com, FIFA+ and “other supporting channels”.

And yes - this newsletter was sent on December 4th, so that would be tomorrow if you want to set an alert. This article from FIFA details all you need to know for now about the event.

I think onefootballl has the best, easiest to digest visual of all 32 qualified teams so here’s that:

There was another international window in November which means a slightly clearer view of World Cup 2026 Qualifying.

Before looking at the confederations and their qualifying process, it’s also worth noting that UEFA (i.e. Europe) has not even started its process. UEFA’s qualification begins with the initial step of group creation via a draw on Friday, December 13th. Similarly to the 2025 Club World Cup Draw mentioned above, this UEFA World Cup Qualifying Draw will be streamed live on FIFA+ and FIFA.com.

Regarding the Qualification Process:

I anticipate this being the only newsletter for the month of December so I thought I’d offer some quick suggestions on gifts for the special loved one (even if it is yourself) that enjoys traveling (especially if it involves traveling to attend a match.)

My 4 Favorite World Cup Themed Books:

Continuing a new trend for the 2nd month in a row, I will respond to a few questions that came in through my inbox.

If there’s interest in doing this each month, you can hit respond directly from your inbox to send a message to submit a question. I’m summarizing the topics here:

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