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FIFA has named the match officials for fixtures 49 through 54 of the 2026 World Cup, continuing its methodical rollout of assignments for a tournament that will be the largest in the competition’s history. Among the appointments are two officials who are about to do something no one in their profession has done before.
Alireza Faghani, a referee with ties to both Australia and Iran, and Argentine assistant referee Juan Pablo Belatti have been appointed to their fourth men’s World Cup. That’s a first. No match official has ever reached that milestone in the men’s tournament.
The biggest officiating operation in World Cup history
The 2026 World Cup, spread across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, is a logistical beast. The expanded format means 104 matches, up from 64 at the 2022 edition in Qatar. That kind of scale demands a massive officiating infrastructure.
FIFA’s answer: 170 match officials in total. That breaks down to 52 referees, 88 assistant referees, and 30 video match officials. It is, by a comfortable margin, the largest officiating roster ever assembled for a World Cup.
The full list was published on April 9, 2026, the result of a three-year selection process that pulled candidates from 50 member associations across all six continental confederations.
Now the organization is working through the group stage schedule, assigning specific officials to specific games in batches. Matches 49 through 54 represent the latest wave of those announcements.
What makes Faghani and Belatti’s achievement significant
Faghani’s path is particularly notable. Born in Iran and now based in Australia, he represents the kind of cross-confederation career that has become more common in modern football but remains unusual at the highest level. His appointment to a fourth tournament speaks to a consistency and quality of performance sustained across more than a decade of international football.
Belatti, working the lines as an assistant referee, has followed a similarly durable trajectory from Argentina. Doing that job at the World Cup four times over requires not just skill but physical longevity and the trust of FIFA’s refereeing committee across multiple cycles.
Preparation and the road to kickoff
FIFA gathered its officials for a 10-day seminar in Miami ahead of the tournament. The seminar covered tactical preparation, fitness benchmarking, and alignment on how the laws of the game will be interpreted and enforced throughout the tournament. With 170 officials from 50 different football cultures, getting everyone on the same page is not a trivial exercise.
Match 49, one of the games covered in this latest batch of appointments, features Scotland against Brazil, scheduled for June 24, 2026, at Hard Rock Stadium.
The systematic, transparent approach to naming officials well in advance of each match is a deliberate departure from the more opaque methods of past tournaments. By publishing appointments ahead of time, FIFA gives teams, media, and fans the ability to understand who is in charge and what their track record looks like. It also gives the officials themselves time to prepare specifically for the teams and tactical styles they will be managing.
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