Homeless World Cup

The Homeless World Cup is an annual football tournament organized by the Homeless World Cup Foundation, a social organization which advocates the end of homelessness through the sport of association football (or soccer). The organization puts together an annual football tournament where teams of homeless people from each country compete. All tournaments features both men’s and women’s teams.

The Homeless World Cup organization operates through a network of more than 70 national partners around the world, supporting football programs and social enterprise development.

The tournament is played on synthetic turf fields from Act Global.

Players must meet all of the following criteria:

• be at least 16 years old at the time of the tournament;
• have not taken part in previous homeless world cup tournaments.

Also, must be any of the following:

• have been homeless at some point after the previous year’s tournament in accordance with the national definition of homelessness;
• make their main living income as a streetpaper vendor;
• be asylum seekers currently without positive asylum status or who were previously asylum seekers but obtained residency status a year before the event;
• currently be in drug or alcohol rehabilitation and also have been homeless at some point in the past two years.

A maximum of 4 players per team on the court:

• 3 outfield players;
• 1 goalkeeper;
• plus 4 substitution players (rolling substitution allowed).

The winning team gets 3 points. The losing team gets zero points. If a match ends in a draw, it is decided by sudden-death penalty shootout and the winning team gets two points and the losing team gets one point. Games are 14 minutes long, in two seven-minute halves. The field measures 22m long x 16m wide.