Everything You Need to Know About the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup Taking off This July

Updated On: November 09, 2023 by   Noha Basiouny

The World Cup usually has the largest media coverage among all sports events. Its news is always in big headlines, and its highlights, such as Argentina‘s spectacular win in the 2022 edition, typically resonate with millions of fans for so long. That aside, we seem to know very little about other sports competitions in general and almost nothing about the Women’s World Cup in particular.

Well, yes. That is true. There is a World Cup football tournament for women also organised by FIFA, and it has been around for quite some time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0khPJrUB6ho

As of 12 June 2023, we are only 38 days away from the kickoff of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which is co-hosted this time by both New Zealand and Australia. As reported by BBC, over one million tickets have been sold so far. Aside from any comparison with the Men’s World Cup, the women’s version is a huge event, and this year’s edition is even expected to be super unique, rather the largest and most fantastic one.

So here is everything you need to know about this upcoming tournament.

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Just like the original men’s version, the FIFA Women’s World Cup is a contest between national football women’s teams that lasts this year for a month, taking off on 20 July and ending on 20 August 2023. Compared to the most recent one, that of 2019, this year’s competition is witnessing many changes that shall make it the best one ever made. So let’s learn some more details.

Host countries

Unlike the previous editions, the Women’s World Cup this time will be co-hosted by both New Zealand and Australia. The Men’s World Cup has imitated that for the 2026 edition, which is planned to be hosted in Canada, the US and Mexico. It is also the first tournament of its kind to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, so if you live anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere and are planning to fly there, make sure you check the weather map first, then pack accordingly.

In 2019, 10 countries expressed their interest in hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Australia and surprisingly, South Korea, which proposed co-hosting this tournament with North Korea!

Later on, Belgium and Bolivia dropped out, while Japan and Brazil took back their bids before voting. In June 2020, Australia and New Zealand were selected to host the tournament, with both countries winning a total of 22 votes compared to Colombia, which earned only 13 votes.

Six stadiums in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, and Adelaide in Australia and four in Auckland, Dunedin, Hamilton and Wellington in New Zealand are going to host the matches.

Most of these stadiums were primarily suitable for such a big tournament. Still, they had to undergo some small renovations to be just perfect. Only the Sydney Football Stadium was totally upgraded. Renovations were mostly about the pitch, the lighting, and the changing rooms.

The first match is to be played on 20 July 2023 in Eden Park, New Zealand’s national and largest stadium, whose capacity is 50,000 spectators. The final match, on the other hand, scheduled on 20 August 2023, will be hosted in Stadium Australia in Sydney, which is the largest among all the stadiums used in the tournament, with a capacity of 83,500 spectators.

Stadium Australia is also the world’s 18th biggest stadium by capacity.

Participating countries

Thirty-two nations from six confederations are competing in the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup compared to the 24 ones that contributed to the previous tournament. Seven, the US, Norway, Germany, Nigeria, Brazil, Sweden, and Japan, out of those 32 have played in every past such tournament.

That said, twenty of the 32 participating nations are first-timers, such as Haiti, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Vietnam, Zambia and Morocco, who made an out-of-this-world achievement in the 2022 Men’s World Cup by defeating powerful Spain and Portugal and winning fourth place.

The Philippines, which has never participated in the Men’s World Cup, is also playing in this women’s competition for the first time.

Other countries that are rarely, if ever, seen in the Men’s World Cup are participating in the women’s version, such as Panama, Jamaica and Equatorial Guinea.

Prise money and trophy

Besides lifting the golden trophy for the first time since 1986, Argentina was awarded $440 million in 2022 compared to the $400 given to France in 2018 and the $358 million allocated to Germany in 2014. Things are a little, well, sometimes a lot, different for the Women’s World Cup. For the 2023 edition, the winner takes $110 million, which, according to the Internet, is double the amount given in 2019!

The Women’s Worth Cup trophy also looks different from the Men’s World Cup trophy. It was designed for the 1999 tournament especially and has been in use since then. The trophy has a spiral band with a football at the top and a base that looks like a cone. Interestingly, the names of the previous winners are engraved at the bottom of the base.

This trophy is 47 cm tall and weighs 4.6 kg. It is made of silver, covered with a clad of gold, and is generally smaller than the men’s World Cup trophy.

However, there is a significant difference between both trophies, thankfully in favour of women. Men are awarded the original trophy only during the celebration, but what they take home is just a replica, while FIFA takes back the original trophy. Women, on the other hand, are given an original trophy every time.

The original Men’s World Cup trophy is made of 18-karat gold. The replica, however, is made of bronze with a coat of gold.

Structure

As we will demonstrate in a few paragraphs, the Women’s World Cup had a completely different structure when it first started in the early 1990s than the one it has now. But every time it was played, it witnessed significant changes and expansions that made it a replica of the Men’s World Cup this year, at least when it comes to how it is played.

So all 32 nations competing for the Women’s World Cup title are divided into eight groups of four teams. Teams in each group play against one another. The best two of each group progress to the next stage, Round of 16, also known as the Knockout. Eight teams from the Knockout qualify for the Quarterfinals then four teams play in the Semi-finals. Those who lose play over third and fourth places, and the winners play for the title.

In total, 64 matches will be played this year in the Women’s World Cup.

History of Women’s World Cup

In 1922, an international ban on women’s football was imposed, and aside from the reasons why this happened, which no one now can be sure of, it continued until 1970.

After Italy hosted the first yet unofficial Women’s World Cup tournament in the early 1970s, many countries lifted that ban. Another tournament with the same name was hosted in Mexico in 1971, and more versions like this emerged in the following years.

As time went by, more and more countries allowed women to play football again, as a result of which new teams appeared. More international tournaments were organised, and then the demands for a more constructed one began to pop up. So continental football tournaments for women were held in Asia in the mid-1970s and Europe in the mid-1980s.

With the widespread popularity of women’s football, a competition was organised in China in 1988 as a prototype to test how applicable it would be to create a Women’s World Cup. This competition was a great success as thousands of people attended the matches. Norway won the title after defeating Sweden 1-0, and China took fourth place after losing to Brazil.

The great success of this tournament confirmed the feasibility of creating a World Cup for women, which came in its first official form in 1991 and was hosted again in China. At the time, only 12 teams were competing, and the US star rose after defeating Norway 

2-1 and being crowned world champion.

China hosted the Women’s World Cup again in 2007, and the US also hosted it twice in 1999 and 2003. In fact, China was supposed to host the 2003 edition, but it was cancelled because of the SARS outbreak and thus passed down to the US. Sweden, Germany, Canada, and Finland each hosted the event once. The number of attendees has grown significantly over the years, exceeding one million in 2019.

Development

As we just mentioned, only 12 teams were competing in the first edition of the Women’s World Cup that took place in 1991. This was also the case in 1995. Starting from 1999 and up to 2011, teams were increased to 16. In 2015, the number was again expanded to 24. This consequently increased the number of matches played, and the attendance of the entire tournament skyrocketed compared to the previous years.

In 2019 when the tournament was hosted in France, 24 teams played a total of 52 matches, and over a million people attended them. After the massive success of this edition, FIFA president Gianni Infantino suggested the expansion of the competing teams once again to 32 teams to match those in the Men’s World Cup. He was also the one who proposed the doubling of the prise money.

The following Women’s World Cup is scheduled in 2027 unless another pandemic, God forbid, or any other global tragedy decides to put the entire planet, again, on hold. However, the next host country, or countries, has not yet been chosen.

Champions

Since the takeoff back in the early 1990s, Norway and Japan each won the Women’s World Cup once in 1995 and 2011, respectively. Germany became the champions twice in a row, in 2003 and 2007. That said, the US surprisingly won the four remaining tournaments, two of which were consecutive, in 2015 and 2019.

This surely provokes wonder.

As it turns out, about 3.5 billion people from every corner of the globe, that is 43% of our planet’s population, are football fans. This pretty much makes it the most popular sport in the entire world. But for some reason, football or ‘soccer’ in Canada and the US is not that much of a thing. American football, basketball, and baseball, respectively, are the most popular sports in the US, while ice hockey is Canada’s number one game.

That is why the American ‘regular’ football men’s national team is not as competitive when playing in worldwide competitions such as the World Cup. For instance, it was eliminated in the Round of 16 after losing to the Netherlands in the 2022 World Cup and did not even qualify for the 2018 World Cup. There indeed are many reasons why this is the case in the US, but interestingly, it is only limited to men’s football.

As it turns out, the American women’s football team is so excellent that they won the World Cup four out of the eight times they participated in the competition, that is, 1991, 1999, 2015 and 2019.

According to the Internet, this is attributed to many reasons, most of which revolve around the enormous investments made in the women’s game. The sport is also cheaper, it does not need any equipment and is accessible to everyone. Combined, those and many other factors allowed the American women’s national football team to become highly competitive.

Many even bet they will make it once again this year and win the tournament, their third time in a row, making by that a bigger-scaled hat trick—Hehe, too bad. Sorry.

If you are a football fan and would like to see a competition that may sound common but has an entirely different approach, style and performance, then you must watch the 2023 Women’s World Cup. But if you are more into watching the matches live, flying to Australia and New Zealand also makes a perfect holiday, especially at this time of the year.