1998 FIFA World Cup

Lore & Background

The tournament was won by host country France, who beat defending champions Brazil 3–0 in the final to win their first title. In doing so France became the seventh nation to win the World Cup, and the sixth (after Uruguay, Italy, England, West Germany and Argentina) to win the World Cup on home soil. Through 2026, France remains the most recent team to win the tournament on home soil. Croatia, Jamaica, Japan and South Africa made their first appearances in the tournament.

In Their Own Story

The Stade de France hummed under a July sky, 80,000 voices a single chord. In the Brazil dressing room, the air was thick with silence; Ronaldo sat on the bench, eyes fixed on nothing, his hands still trembling from the episode hours before. Across the corridor, Zidane laced his boots with the calm of a man who had already decided what the evening would look like. The whistle blew. And within ninety minutes, the blue-and-white captain would be lifting the trophy above a sea of Tricolour, the solid gold gleaming under the floodlights while the Brazilian bench sat in a stunned, collective exhale. The scoreboard read 3-0. The world would never quite look at that number the same way again.

Reader's Guide

Qualification for the finals began in March 1996 and concluded in November 1997. For the first time in the competition, the group stage was expanded from 24 teams to 32, with eight groups of four. 64 matches were played in 10 stadiums in 10 host cities, with the opening match and final staged at the newly built Stade de France in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. This was the first World Cup since the introduction of golden goals, banning of tackles from behind that endanger the safety of an opponent and allowance of three substitutions per game.

Did You Know?

• France was awarded the 1998 World Cup on 2 July 1992 by the executive committee of FIFA during a general meeting in Zürich, Switzerland, defeating Morocco by 12 votes to 7.
• On 4 June 2015, Chuck Blazer confirmed that he and other members of FIFA's executive committee were bribed during the 1998 World Cup host selection process; the bribe payment was from the failed Moroccan bid.
• This was the first FIFA World Cup where fourth officials used electronic boards, instead of cardboard.
• As of 2026, this was the last time Romania and Bulgaria qualified for the World Cup finals, the only time Jamaica have qualified and the last time Portugal failed to qualify.