Is Infantino's reign in danger? here's how FIFA presidential elections work and who can challenge him

Gianni Infantino entered the 2026 FIFA Congress in Vancouver as the undisputed leader of world football's governing body, widely expected to cruise to a third and final term when elections roll around next year. Just months later, that certainty has evaporated.

A botched attempt to sell a 21 per cent stake in FIFA's commercial and event operations to an outside investment fund has triggered a rapid unravelling of support for the president.

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UEFA has publicly voiced its loss of confidence in his leadership, while long-time allies and advisers have begun distancing themselves from him. What once looked like a formality — Infantino extending his reign to 2031 — is now genuinely in doubt.

FIFA has changed hands only a handful of times since Frenchman Robert Guerin became its first president in 1904.

Infantino is just the ninth person to hold the role and only the third since the mid-1970s, following the lengthy reigns of Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter, who together led the organisation for more than four decades.

Blatter's exit, following an ethics committee finding of unethical conduct amid corruption allegations, prompted FIFA to introduce a 12-year cap on presidential terms in 2016 — the same year Infantino, then a UEFA executive, took charge.

Infantino has argued that his first three-year term shouldn't count toward that limit, an interpretation that would let him serve 15 years if re-elected next spring.

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FIFA holds presidential elections every four years, timed to follow each men's World Cup. The 2019 and 2023 contests never reached a ballot; Infantino was reappointed by acclamation both times, a reflection of how commanding his position had become.

The last genuinely contested election was in 2016, when he defeated four rivals—including Prince Ali bin Hussein and Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa—in a second round of voting at an Extraordinary Congress in Zurich.

The presidential race unfolds over roughly a year, running from one Congress to the next.

Any prospective candidate must show an active role in football administration for at least two of the previous five years and clear an eligibility review conducted by a FIFA committee.

Crucially, they also need formal declarations of support from a minimum of five member associations before the November 18 deadline this year.

Each association can back only one candidate — a detail that matters given that several nations, including Wales and England, have already withdrawn their symbolic support for Infantino.

Earlier in the year, Infantino had claimed pledges from 200 of FIFA's 211 members.

Clearing the five-association threshold merely opens the door to candidacy. Actually winning requires a simple majority — more than 50 per cent, or 106 votes — when two candidates are in the running.

Every association's vote carries equal weight, meaning Spain's vote counts the same as the Seychelles', and Argentina's the same as Aruba's.

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This is where the president's position looks newly vulnerable. UEFA controls 55 votes and has come out against him. The Asian Football Confederation, with 46 votes, and Concacaf, with 35, have both criticised the now-abandoned investment plan.

Combined, those three confederations hold enough votes to remove Infantino from office — though there's no guarantee every member within them would vote as a bloc. Qatar, an AFC member, has already broken ranks, saying it "fully supports" the president.

History offers a cautionary note for challengers banking on confederation-wide backing.

Sheikh Salman had the public support of the Asian and African confederations in 2016—thereturally upwards of 100 associations—yet secured only 88 votes in a secret ballot, underscoring how unreliable bloc support can be.

Should more than two candidates enter the race, the opening round would require a two-thirds majority, with subsequent rounds narrowing the field until a winner emerges. Infantino needed two rounds and 115 votes to win outright in 2016.

Challengers now have roughly sixteen weeks to build support before the candidacy deadline closes. Concacaf president Victor Montagliani has been named as someone weighing a serious bid — what would be the first genuine challenge to Infantino in over a decade.

FIFA confirmed at its 2026 Congress that the presidential vote will take place in Morocco on March 18, 2027, determining who leads the organisation into its centenary World Cup across six host countries in 2030.

Morocco's selection carried symbolic weight for a country hoping to host the 2030 final ahead of co-hosts Spain and for Infantino himself, given his traditionally strong backing from CAF, Africa's football's governing body.

FIFA previously staged its 2023 vote in Kigali, Rwanda, where Infantino again won unopposed.

That timeline, however, is no longer guaranteed. An emergency Council meeting could be triggered if a majority of its 37 members lose confidence in Infantino, or more plausibly if a fifth of member associations request an emergency Congress.

UEFA alone has enough votes to force that scenario, potentially opening the door to a no-confidence vote against the sitting president.

There's a certain symmetry to the moment: an emergency Congress installed Infantino as president a decade ago. Whether another one now ends his tenure remains to be seen.