The origin of the World Cup: how the first tournament came together, and what has (and hasn't) changed in almost 100 years

On 28 May 1928, at the 17th FIFA Congress in Amsterdam, a group of football officials voted in favor of something that had never existed before: a world tournament of national teams, organized by FIFA itself, open to professional and amateur players alike — something the Olympic Games, limited to amateurs, had never been able to offer. French vice-president Henri Delaunay summed it up in a line that became the tournament's founding spirit: "international football can no longer be limited to the Olympic Games."

FIFA president Jules Rimet spent years pushing the idea until it became reality — but deciding where to play it wasn't automatic. Uruguay won the hosting rights for two very concrete reasons: the country was celebrating the centenary of its first Constitution in 1930, and its national team had just won back-to-back Olympic gold medals (1924 and 1928), making it the strongest side in the world at the time. As an added selling point, Uruguay offered to cover the travel and accommodation costs for every delegation willing to make the trip.

That offer wasn't a small detail. Europe was already feeling the early effects of the Great Depression, and most European footballers were amateurs with day jobs they feared losing if they spent months away crossing the Atlantic. By February 1930, no European team had entered yet. Jules Rimet personally intervened, convincing France, Belgium, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the journey. The first three sailed together from Europe aboard the SS Conte Verde, which stopped in Rio de Janeiro to pick up Brazil's delegation as well — a journey of nearly two full weeks.

The tournament kicked off on 13 July 1930, and Uruguay ended up winning it as hosts, beating Argentina 4-2 in the final, played in front of more than 68,000 people at the newly built Estadio Centenario.

What's stayed exactly the same, almost 100 years later

Despite everything that's changed in football since then, two fundamental rules from that first World Cup remain untouched: every team still takes the field with 11 players, and every match still lasts 90 minutes of regulation time. They're the two pillars that neither the passage of time nor the sport's tactical evolution has managed to touch.

What's changed completely

Almost everything else did change, and some of it is more surprising than it looks:

• Participating teams: from 13 in 1930 to 48 in 2026 — nearly four times as many.
• Qualification: 1930 was the only World Cup in history played purely on direct invitations; every edition since has required going through a qualifying process.
• Player substitutions: didn't exist until 1970. Between 1930 and 1966, the 22 players who started a match were the same 22 who finished it, regardless of injury. The first substitution in World Cup history was made by the Soviet Union against Mexico, in the opening match of Mexico 1970.
• Yellow and red cards: didn't exist either — they debuted at that same 1970 World Cup, after an on-field confusion incident in 1966 led an English referee to invent the color-coded system while looking at a traffic light.
• Penalty shootouts to break ties: the mechanism didn't exist until a 1978 rule change; the first one actually used at a World Cup wasn't until 1982.
• VAR: only arrived in 2018, in Russia.
• The trophy: the original, the Jules Rimet Cup, was awarded from 1930 to 1970 and no longer exists today (it was stolen and never recovered in 1983). The current trophy, awarded since 1974, is a completely different design.
• The journey: two weeks by boat in 1930, a few hours by plane today.
• The audience: in 1930 there was no broadcast at all — no radio, let alone television. Today, an estimated 3 billion-plus people follow every edition.

Taken together, the 2026 World Cup and the 1930 one share less than you might expect at first glance — but the two rules that did survive (11 players, 90 minutes) are, perhaps, the reason the game still feels recognizable as the same sport, almost a century later.