FIFA Club World Cup

The FIFA Club World Cup (FIFA CWC) is an international men's association football competition organised by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The competition was first contested in 2000 as the FIFA Club World Championship. It was not held from 2001 to 2004 due to a combination of factors, chiefly the collapse of FIFA's marketing partner International Sport and Leisure (ISL). It returned in 2005 as an annual competition until 2023. Following the 2023 edition, the tournament was restructured into a quadrennial event beginning in 2025, adopting a format similar to that of the FIFA World Cup. The current world champions are Chelsea, who defeated Paris Saint-Germain 3–0 in the 2025 final.

The first FIFA Club World Championship took place in Brazil in 2000, during which year it ran in parallel with the Intercontinental Cup, a competition played by the winners of the UEFA Champions League and the Copa Libertadores, with the champions of each tournament both retroactively recognised by FIFA as club world champions in 2017. In 2005, the Intercontinental Cup was merged with the FIFA Club World Championship, and in 2006, the tournament was renamed as the FIFA Club World Cup. The winner of the Club World Cup receives the FIFA Club World Cup trophy and a FIFA Champions Badge.

The current format, which came into effect with the 2025 edition, features 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation; 12 teams from Europe, 6 from South America, 4 from Africa, 4 from Asia, 4 from North, Central America and Caribbean, 1 from Oceania, and 1 team from the host nation. The teams are drawn into eight groups of four, with each team playing three group stage matches in a round-robin format. The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage, starting with the round of 16 and culminating with the final.

Real Madrid hold the record for most titles, having won the competition five times. Corinthians' inaugural victory remains the best result from a host nation's national league champions. Teams from Spain have won the tournament eight times, the most for any nation. England has the largest number of winning teams, with four clubs having won the tournament.

The first club tournament to be billed as the Football World Championship was held in 1887, in which FA Cup winners Aston Villa beat Scottish Cup winners Hibernian, the winners of the only national competitions at the time. The first time when the champions of two European leagues met was in what was nicknamed the 1895 World Championship, when English champions Sunderland beat Scottish champions Heart of Midlothian 5–3. Ironically, the Sunderland lineup in the 1895 World Championship consisted entirely of Scottish players – Scottish players who moved to England to play professionally in those days were known as the Scotch Professors.

The first attempt at creating a global club football tournament, according to FIFA, was in 1909, 21 years before the first FIFA World Cup. The Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy was held in Italy in 1909 and 1911, and contested by English, Italian, German and Swiss clubs. English amateur team West Auckland won on both occasions.

The idea that FIFA should organise international club competitions dates from the beginning of the 1950s. In 1951, the Brazilian FA created Copa Rio, also called "World Champions Cup" in Brazil, with a view to being a Club World Cup (a "club version" of the FIFA World Cup). FIFA president Jules Rimet was asked about FIFA's involvement in Copa Rio, and stated that it was not under FIFA's jurisdiction since it was organised and sponsored by the Brazilian FA. FIFA board officials Stanley Rous and Ottorino Barassi participated personally, albeit not as FIFA assignees, in the organisation of Copa Rio in 1951. Rous' role was the negotiations with European clubs, whereas Barassi did the same and also helped form the framework of the competition. The Italian press regarded the competition as an "impressive project" that "was greeted so enthusiastically by FIFA officials Stanley Rous and Jules Rimet to the extent of almost giving it an official FIFA stamp." Because of the difficulty the Brazilian FA found in bringing European clubs to the competition, the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper suggested that there should be FIFA involvement in the programming of international club competitions saying that, "ideally, international tournaments, here or abroad, should be played with a schedule set by FIFA". Palmeiras beat Juventus at Maracanã with over 200,000 spectators in attendance at the final of the 1951 Copa Rio, and were hailed as the first ever Club World Champions by the whole Brazilian press. However, as a number of European clubs declined participation in Copa Rio and their berths were given to less renowned ones, the quality of the eventually participating clubs was criticised in the Brazilian press, therefore the Brazilian FA announced that the following editions of Copa Rio were not to be hailed as a World Champions Cup but only as Copa Rio, and thus the second edition of the cup, won by Fluminense in 1952, was hailed as a World Champions Cup by a minority of the Brazilian press, having Copa Rio been extinguished by the Brazilian FA soon later, and replaced with another cup, won in 1953 by Vasco da Gama.

Still in the 1950s, the Pequeña Copa del Mundo (Spanish for Small World Cup) was a tournament held in Venezuela between 1952 and 1957, with some other club tournaments held in Caracas from 1958 onwards also often referred to by the name of the original 1952–1957 tournament. It was usually played by four participants, with two from Europe and two from South America.