London to host the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup 26 finals | OneFootball

The FIFA Council appointed London, England, as the host of the final phase of the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup 2026, which will comprise four matches to be played between 28 January and 1 February next year.

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This is a fantastic news for Arsenal who get an big advantage with home fans and no travel at all. The other three teams will travel from the USA, South America, Africa/Asia/Oceania.

They will have to travel to London while most of them are in pre-season, while Arsenal will be one month into the second half of their season, having played United and Chelsea in the League and potentially two cup games.

The grounds are not known yet as four games will be played in London: two semi-finals and a third place play-off and the final.

As the tournament is supposed to be played on neutral ground, you would not expect the Emirates Stadium to be used for the Arsenal games, even if the ground is available at the weekend as are Brentford, Fulham and West Ham.

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It really depends on how big FIFA want the stadiums to be. There is no doubt that the home advantage will mean Arsenal will bring a lot of fans, but the other three teams will not bring many more than 500 travelling fans.

Of course the local diaspora living in London should bring fans from those teams too.

Tournament schedule

Round 1: Wuhan Jangdia v Auckland United in Wuhan on 8 October 25

Round 2: CAF Champion v winner of Wuhan Jangdia v Auckland United in Africa in December 25

Finals in London

Semi-finals:

Finals:

FIFA have certainly handed a huge advantage to Arsenal by giving the tournament to London and the players and staff will have to make it count to be crowned the first-ever Women’s Champions Cup winner.