The candidates are Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia and the United States, plus joint bids from Belgium-Netherlands and Spain-Portugal.

 

Qatar and South Korea are only bidding for the 2022 tournament, which will be awarded at the same time as 2018 at a meeting of FIFA's ruling 24-man Executive Committee at a meeting in Dubai in December 2010.

 

FIFA confirmed the candidates after the deadline to formally register bids passed last night.

 

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said: "We are very pleased about the fantastic level of interest in our flagship competition, with all initial bidders confirming their candidature.

 

"The diversity and quality of the contenders will make this a very interesting selection process.

 

"This shows the importance of the FIFA World Cup as a truly universal event."

 

Candidates are supposed to provide 12 stadiums holding at least 40,000 fans for group matches, with one stadium of at least 80,000 capacity to stage the opening match and final.

 

Five of the bids come from FIFA's Asian confederation, two from the CONCACAF region of the Americas and four from Europe.

 

Europe, which currently provides 13 of the 32 teams who compete in the event, is a strong favorite to host in 2018 after the 2010 finals were awarded to South Africa and the 2014 tournament to Brazil.

 

England has not hosted the event since 1966, when they beat West Germany 4-2 in the final with Geoff Hurst scoring a hat-trick.

 

Sebastian Coe, the chairman of London 2012 who has joined England's World Cup in a non-executive director capacity, is excited by the prospects of the bid.

 

He said: "There's lots of very good people working for a great cause.