In just a few weeks, the 2026 FIFA U20 Women's World Cup is scheduled to take place in Poland. Featuring 24 promising national teams, the tournament should be a measuring stick for next-gen talent pools and a preview of what's to come in future senior World Cups. Instead, this year's competition is now part of a bigger story, one about who actually controls the sport and how that affects tournament planning and roster building.
Headlines ahead of the U20 World Cup are less about the upcoming tournament and more focused on FIFA president Gianni Infantino's now-scrapped FIFA Forward Enterprise plan to sell equity stakes to investors and privatize future World Cup and other major tournaments. What's notable over the last month is the absence of women's soccer from the conversation. The $20 billion commercial entity plan was met with swift backlash, potential boycotts, and has continued to fracture federations about next steps regarding leadership.
Statements, ultimatums, and meetings over the weeks have specifically centered the men's tournaments. Infantino's initial plan framed future funding distribution through commercial cycles of the men's competitions through 2038. Combine youth competition with the women's game, and you find they were never focal parts of the overall privatization pitch, or ever viewed as general leverage, and were never really flagged as at risk in the boycott declarations issued by UEFA and later supported by the AFC and Concacaf.
Perhaps a blind spot, but it's been the same one the sport has had for decades: women's and youth programming are an afterthought to the machine built around the men's game. That disconnect is why preparations for Poland 2026 have largely continued without disruption. In October, FIFA's U17 Women's World Cup is scheduled to take place in Morocco, and several European national teams have qualifying matches for next year's 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup in Brazil.
Meanwhile, national team staffs are hard at work preparing for the competitions. "We're just finalizing the last little bits of prep while finalizing the roster, and we're excited to get on that plane to Poland," USWNT U20 head coach Vicky Jepson told CBS Sports. Host nation Poland already recommitted to its responsibility in welcoming all participating national teams across four host cities.
The French Football Federation was first to clarify that it would participate in the upcoming U20 World Cup, followed by vocal support from New Zealand, and later Canada and Brazil. While other federations have not released statements, CBS Sports understands that other qualified nations are continuing tournament prep, including the USWNT U20 program and England. With the U20 Women's World Cup set to kick off on Sept. 5, coaches are building rosters -- the primary challenge for programs at the moment -- not organizing the possibility of a boycott stemming from an enterprise plan that did not include a women's youth program focus.
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