Speaking at the America Business Forum (ABF) Miami 2025, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has once again underscored football’s unique ability to not only unite the world but promote global peace and inspire the next generation of girls and boys to pursue their dreams.

Some of the most influential voices in sports, entertainment, business and global politics and culture attended the two-day summit, held at Miami’s Kaseya Center on 5 and 6 November 2025. In addition to the FIFA President, President of the United States Donald J. Trump, President and CEO of Formula 1 Stefano Domenicali and FIFA World Cup 2022™ winner Lionel Messi were among the speakers on the ABF’s opening day.

“Our motto in FIFA is that football, or soccer, unites the world. It brings people together from the entire planet. I mean the world stands still when the (FIFA) World Cup is played. We had the last (FIFA) World Cup in Qatar where we had three and a half million spectators in the stadium, five billion viewers on TV,” explained Mr Infantino, before looking ahead to the Final Draw for the FIFA World Cup 26™ at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC on Friday, 5 December 2025.

The 23rd edition of the FIFA World Cup will be the first in the competition’s more than 90-year history to be held in three countries, spanning Canada, Mexico and the United States. The tournament will also feature 48 teams, instead of the 32 that have competed since 1998, with a record 104 matches to be played across two stadiums in Canada, three in Mexico and 11 in the USA from Thursday, 11 June to Sunday, 19 July 2026.

The FIFA President said: “This will be even bigger here because we will have seven million spectators in the stadiums, and we will have six billion people watching it on TV, and millions will come to the United States, to Canada and to Mexico to stay together, to unite, to enjoy, to learn to know one another.

“This is the magnitude of what football is about, so we want to unite and we want to contribute when we see what is happening in our world today, which is a very divided world.”

The FIFA President also revealed how FIFA’s determination to unite the world and spread peace through the beautiful game led to the introduction of the “FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World”, a new annual award recognising exceptional actions towards peace and unity. The FIFA Peace Prize will be presented for the first time at next month’s Final Draw, which Mr Infantino said will reach a global audience of one billion.

“This is the right platform to award somebody who has done so much or is doing so much for peace because we need that. Football helps a little bit, but then we need leaders to push it into the goal and to score the goal,” he added.

Elaborating on FIFA’s overarching philosophy, the FIFA President took tremendous pride in highlighting the FIFA Women’s U-17 World Cup Morocco 2025™ and FIFA U-17 World Cup Qatar 2025™ - in addition to the ground-breaking FIFA Football For Schools programme - as platforms for sporting and personal development and vehicles for social change.

Mr Infantino said: “Our objective, our aim is, on one side, to make football truly global, but on the other side, to give every talent in every corner of the world the opportunity and the chance to dream. And, if you can give to a child, then give him a ball like this, right? This is a magic object which transforms children or people [into] happy people or happy children, because as soon as you have it, you smile.

“If you can give to a child an opportunity, a chance, a hope to become the next [Lionel] Messi, but also just to become a better man or woman, then I think we have done something great. And all our revenues go back into the game, into 211 countries in the world in order to make sure that children – girls and boys – can do something. And we invest in women’s football…everywhere in the world…in men and boys [football], and this is exactly what makes football so special.”