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The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be the 20th FIFA World Cup, an international association football tournament that is scheduled to take place in June and July 2014 in Brazil.This will be the second time the country has hosted the competition, the first being the 1950 FIFA World Cup. Brazil will become the fifth country to have hosted the FIFA World Cup twice, after Mexico, Italy, France and Germany. It will be the first World Cup to be held in South America since the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina, the first time two consecutive World Cups are staged outside Europe and the first time two consecutive World Cups are staged in the Southern Hemisphere (the 2010 FIFA World Cup was held in South Africa).

On 7 March 2003, FIFA announced that the tournament would be held in South America for the first time since Argentina hosted the competition in 1978, in line with its policy of rotating the right to host the World Cup amongst different confederations. On 3 June 2003, CONMEBOL announced that Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia wanted to host the 2014 World Cup finals. By 17 March 2004, the CONMEBOL associations had voted unanimously to adopt Brazil as their sole candidate.

Brazil formally declared its candidacy in December 2006 and Colombia followed a few days later. The Argentina bid never materialized. On 11 April 2007, Colombia officially withdrew its bid, Francisco Santos Calderón the vice president of Colombia announced that instead Colombia would be hosting the 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup. With this development, Brazil became the only official candidate to host the 2014 event. Brazil won the right to host the event on 30 October 2007 as the only country to enter a bid.

The qualification draw for the 2014 World Cup will be held at the Marina da Glória in Rio de Janeiro on 30 July 2011.As the host nation, Brazil qualify automatically for the tournament.

On 3 March 2011 FIFA decided to distribute places in the final tournament:

• Europe (UEFA) - 13 places
• Asia (AFC) - 4 guaranteed places + 1 place in play-off
• Africa (CAF) - 5 places
• North America, Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF) - 3 guaranteed places + 1 place in play-off
• South America (CONMEBOL) - 4 guaranteed places + 1 place in play-off + Brazil qualified as host nation
• Oceania (OFC) - no guaranteed places - 1 place in play-off

The pairings in play-off games will be determined prior to the main draw, taking place on 29 July 2011 in Rio de Janeiro at a press conference following the meeting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil Organising Committee