FIFA: Infantino’s fourth term puts the organisation’s governance to the test
The bid for 2027 raises a question regarding the governance of world football
Football generates billions, shapes identities and provides entire communities with a common language. FIFA, which has forecast revenues of 11 billion dollars for the 2023–2026 cycle, is not merely a sports federation: it is a global regulator, a competition organiser and a major economic player. An institution of this magnitude cannot be run like a private club. The forthcoming election of its president should therefore provide an opportunity to discuss not only who will lead FIFA, but also under what rules and with what checks and balances.
The first real test concerns Gianni Infantino himself. At the Vancouver Congress in May 2026, the president announced that he would stand for re-election in 2027. If elected, he would remain at the helm until 2031, for a total of fifteen years – just two years fewer than the seventeen years Sepp Blatter spent as president. This puts the credibility of the reforms approved in the wake of the scandal that engulfed Blatter’s tenure to the test.
In 2016, the Extraordinary Congress introduced, amongst other measures aimed at restoring confidence in the organisation, a three-term limit. Infantino, then UEFA General Secretary, had taken part in the work of the FIFA Reform Committee. The twelve-year limit had a specific aim: to reduce the risks of concentration of power, self-serving behaviour and impunity.
Article 33(2) of the Statutes stipulates that no one may hold the office of president for more than three terms. Infantino was first elected in February 2016 and subsequently re-elected in 2019 and 2023. In December 2022, however, the FIFA Council endorsed the interpretation of the Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee that the period 2016–2019 does not count as a term of office for the purposes of the limit.
It is here that a dispute over the statutes becomes a governance issue. FIFA has not disclosed the full reasons behind the decision to exclude almost three years of the presidency from the calculation. In the absence of an explicit clause in the statutes regarding the treatment of a partial term of office, such a significant decision would have required a particularly transparent process, a public explanation and a genuinely independent review.
