Goal 1. Revise the FIFA Statutes and improve our regulations
2026 update
Since President Gianni Infantino was re-elected at the 73rd FIFA Congress in Kigali, Rwanda, in March 2023, FIFA has continued to optimise the FIFA Statutes and other regulations to ensure football maintains its relevance and global appeal in contemporary society.
At the 74th FIFA Congress in, Bangkok, Thailand – the first to be hosted in Southeast Asia – FIFA’s 211 Member Associations (MA) approved a number of changes, including a major restructuring of FIFA Standing Committees that has even further reinforced the bond between FIFA and its MAs.
“The new Standing Committees will lead to the greater involvement of our Member Associations, the confederations and other stakeholders in our decision-making processes, increased female representation and more focused technical expertise in various areas relevant to football,” explained the FIFA President. “In other words, FIFA will be better equipped to face the future.” Following a thorough consultation process with FIFA’s MAs and the confederations, members of the newly created Standing Committees were appointed for the period 2025-2029 at the FIFA Council meeting in October 2025.
Such initiatives illustrate FIFA’s emphasis on open information exchange between football’s many and ever-evolving global stakeholder groups. FIFA has sought to facilitate that with the publication of a wide range of reports on topics including Disciplinary and Ethics, Tribunal Report and Integrity, as well as the annual FIFA Legal Handbook, and the staging of programmes and workshops, such as the FIFA Global Integrity Programme (in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), the FIFA Compliance Summit and the Football Law Annual Review.
FIFA also facilitates in-person information exchange directly with MAs, such as the three FIFA Executive Summits held during the FIFA Club World Cup 2025™, and between MAs: January 2026 saw the third FIFA Cooperation & Knowledge-sharing Workshop as European and African MAs met in Rabat, Morocco, in the latest example of cross-collaboration that has also involved Central Asian MAs.
This was also reinforced by FIFA’s Legal & Compliance Division relocating from Zurich to Miami in August 2024. The move was not only significant in helping the organisation be ready for global tournaments staged in North America, but also the latest step in FIFA expanding its ‘glocal’ footprint in line with the increasingly global nature of the game.
Goal 1 overview
The need to protect and promote the best interests of football remains a key objective for FIFA and is firmly rooted in the FIFA statutes, which is the basis of the legal framework for FIFA operations and the governance of the global game.
These statutory provisions include: (a) drawing up regulations and provisions governing the game of football and related matters and ensuring their enforcement; (b) controlling every type of association football by taking appropriate steps to prevent infringements of the Statutes, regulations or decisions of FIFA or of the laws of the game; and (c) promoting integrity, ethics and fair play with a view to preventing all methods or practices, such as corruption, doping or match manipulation, which might jeopardise the integrity of matches, competitions, players, officials and member associations or give rise to abuse of association football.