The bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups was the process by which the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) selected locations for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups. The process began officially in March 2009; eleven bids from thirteen countries were received, including one which was withdrawn and one that was rejected before FIFA's executive committee voted in November 2010. Two of the remaining nine bids applied only to the 2022 World Cup, while the rest were initially applications for both. Over the course of the bidding, all non-European bids for the 2018 event were withdrawn, resulting in the exclusion of all European bids from consideration for the 2022 edition. By the time of the decision, bids for the 2018 World Cup included England, Russia, a joint bid from Belgium and Netherlands, and a joint bid from Portugal and Spain. Bids for the 2022 World Cup came from Australia, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, and the United States. Indonesia's bid was disqualified due to lack of governmental support, and Mexico withdrew its bid for financial reasons.

On 2 December 2010, Russia and Qatar were selected as the locations for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups respectively. The selection process involved several controversies. Two members of the FIFA Executive Committee had their voting rights suspended following allegations that they would accept money in exchange for votes. More allegations of vote buying arose after Qatar's win was announced. Eleven of the 22 committee members who voted on the 2018 and 2022 tournaments have been fined, suspended, banned for life or prosecuted for corruption.

In October 2007, FIFA ended its continental rotation policy. Instead, countries that are members of the same confederation as either of the last two tournament hosts are ineligible, leaving Africa ineligible for 2018 and South America ineligible for both 2018 and 2022. Other factors in the selection process include the number of suitable stadiums, and their location across candidate nations. Voting is done using a multiple round exhaustive ballot system whereby the candidate receiving the fewest votes in each round is eliminated until a single candidate is chosen by the majority.

Following the selection of the 2006 World Cup hosts, FIFA had decided on a policy for determining the hosts of future editions. The six world confederations — roughly corresponding to continents – would rotate in their turn of providing bids, for a specific edition, from within their member national associations. This system was used only for the selection of the 2010 (South Africa) and 2014 World Cup (Brazil) hosts, open only to CAF and CONMEBOL members, respectively.

In September 2007, the rotation system came under review, and a new system was proposed which renders ineligible for bidding only the last two World Cup host confederations. This proposal was adopted on 29 October 2007, in Zürich, Switzerland by FIFA's executive committee. Under this policy, a 2018 bid could have come from CONCACAF, AFC, UEFA, or OFC, as Africa and South America were ineligible. Likewise, no CONMEBOL member could make a 2022 bid, and candidates from the same confederation as the successful 2018 applicant would be disregarded in the 2022 selection procedure.

The United States, the last non-European candidate in the 2018 bidding cycle, withdrew its bid for that year; hence the 2018 tournament would have to be held in Europe. This in turn meant that CONMEBOL and UEFA were ineligible for 2022.

For both the 2018 and 2022 editions of the World Cup, the FIFA Executive Committee voted to decide which candidate should host the tournament. The multiple round exhaustive ballot system was used to determine the tournament host. All eligible members of the FIFA Executive Committee had one vote. The candidate country that received the fewest votes in each round was eliminated until a single candidate was chosen by the majority. In the event of a tied vote, FIFA President Sepp Blatter would have had the deciding vote. There are twenty-four members on the committee, but two of those were suspended due to accusations of selling votes.

Eleven bids were submitted in March 2009 covering thirteen nations, with two joint bids: Belgium-Netherlands and Portugal-Spain. Mexico also submitted a bid, but withdrew theirs on 28 September 2009, while Indonesia had their bid rejected for lack of government support on 19 March 2010. Two of the remaining nine bids, South Korea and Qatar were only for the 2022 World Cup, while all the others bid for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. However, due to the withdrawals of the five non-European bids for the 2018 World Cup, making all remaining bids for the 2018 World Cup were from European nations, and FIFA's rules dictate that countries belonging to confederations that hosted either of the two preceding tournaments are not eligible to host, all UEFA bids were forced to be for 2018 only. Four bids came from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), four from Europe's UEFA, and one from CONCACAF. It had also been reported on the FIFA website that Egypt was entering a bid, but the president of the Egyptian Football Association denied that any more than an inquiry in principle had been made.