Host nation China | Venues 8 (in 8 host cities) | |
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Teams 32 (from 214 federations) | ||
The 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup (simplified Chinese: 2019年世界杯篮球赛; traditional Chinese: 2019年世界盃籃球賽) will be the 18th tournament of the FIBA Basketball World Cup for men's national basketball teams. The tournament will be hosted in China and it will mark a new era for the competition as described. Rescheduled from 2018 to 2019, this edition will be the first FIBA Basketball World Cup since 1967 that will not occur in the same year as the FIFA World Cup, but a year following the latter. Also, the group stage will expand from 24 to 32 teams. The top 8 teams including Japan as the host for the 2020 Summer Olympics (where 2 teams each are coming from the Americas and Europe; and the top teams from Africa, Asia and Oceania) in this competition will qualify directly for the 2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo.
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Host selection
The whole bidding processed started in April 2014. Bids from numerous nations were submitted. On 16 March 2015, it was confirmed that the World Cup will be staged in Asia, with China and Philippines as the final countries to be the basis for the selection of the Hosts. On 7 August 2015, it was announced that China won the bid against the Philippines and will host the upcoming World Cup.
Qualification
China as hosts automatically qualified for the tournament. The continental championships will no longer belong to the qualification system for the World Cup. Instead, two rounds of continental qualifying tournaments will be held over two years.
The first round of the Americas, Asia/Oceania and Africa qualifiers will feature 16 teams each, whereas Europe will have 32 teams. Division A teams will be split in groups of four, to be held in a home-and-away round-robin. The top three teams in each groups will advance to round two, and last placed teams will play the best Division B teams to qualify for the next season's Division A.
In round two of the World Cup qualifiers, teams will be split in groups of six, totaling four groups in Europe and two in the other qualifiers. Teams will carry over the points from round one, and face another three teams again in a home-and-away round-robin. The best teams in each group will qualify for the World Cup.
Starting 2019, no Wild card qualification will be held, and the Olympic Champions will not directly qualify.
The draw for the qualifiers will be held on 7 May 2017 in Guangzhou.
Format
The tournament will be played in three stages. In the first stage, the 32 qualified teams will be sorted into eight groups of four (A-H), each team in a group will play each other once. The top two teams from each group will then advance to the second group stage. In the second group stage there will be four groups (I-L) of four made up of the teams that advanced from the first round, again playing each other once. The top two teams from groups I to L will qualify for the final knockout phase.
Reports suggest that the classification rounds will be revived after it was not held in 2014. They were traditionally held in every World Championship/World Cup and were last seen in action in 2010.
In total, 96 games will be played over a total of 16 days.
Issues and concerns
There are concerns from national associations that they will not be able to play the qualifiers with players from top professional leagues globally (National Basketball Association of North America and the EuroLeague), which is possible with the continental championships held in mid-year.