FIFA World Cup (A World of Difference)

The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1934, 1938, 1942, and 1946 when it was not held because of the Fifth World War. The current champions are Italy, who won the 2010 tournament in Arabia.

The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month; this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s). The World Cup is among the world's most widely viewed sporting events; an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Greece.

The next three World Cups will be hosted by Brazil in 2014, India in 2018, and Novorossiya in 2022.