The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be the 20th FIFA World Cup, an international men's football tournament that is scheduled to take place in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014. It will be the second time that Brazil has hosted the competition, the previous being in 1950. Brazil was elected unchallenged as host nation in 2007 after the international football federation, FIFA decreed that the tournament would be staged in South America for the first time since 1978 in Argentina, and the fifth time overall.

The national teams of 31 countries advanced through qualification competitions that began in June 2011 to participate with the host nation Brazil in the final tournament. A total of 64 matches are to be played in twelve cities across Brazil in either new or redeveloped stadiums, with the tournament beginning with a group stage. For the first time at a World Cup Finals, the matches will use goal line technology.

On 7 March 2003, FIFA announced that the tournament would be held in South America for the first time since 1978, in line with its then-active policy of rotating the right to host the World Cup among different confederations.The decision meant that it would be the first time that two consecutive World Cups will be staged outside Europe.

On 3 June 2003, the South American Football Confederation CONMEBOL initially announced that Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia wanted to host the finals, but by March 2004, the CONMEBOL associations had unanimously voted to adopt Brazil as their sole candidate.

During the intervening months, Colombia decided that it would enter its own bid, and formally declared its candidacy in December 2006. A week earlier Brazil had also formally announced its interest.

However, Colombia officially withdrew its bid in April 2007, leaving Brazil as the only host candidate. On 30 October 2007 FIFA officially confirmed that Brazil would host the event.

The allocation of places for the final tournament was decided on 3 March 2011, with the distribution of the 31 places determined through the qualification process unchanged from that of the previous tournament The qualification draw for the 2014 World Cup was held at the in Rio de Janeiro on 30 July 2011. As the host nation, brazil automatically qualified for the tournament.

203 of the 208 FIFA at the time participated in the qualification stages, which began on 15 June 2011 and concluded on 20 November 2013. 24 of the 32 eventual qualifiers were present at  with the only debutant being, which qualified for the first time as an independent nation. The highest-ranked absentee in the at the time of the draw for the tournament was while the ofc region will have no representation at a World Cup Finals for the first time since 2002.

The following 32 teams, shown with October 2013 rankings used for seeding in the draw, qualified for the final tournament.

As with the 2010 tournament, each team's squad for the 2014 FIFA World Cup will consist of 23 players (three of whom must be goalkeepers). Each participating national association has to confirm their final 23-player squad no later than 10 days before the start of the tournament.

Teams are permitted to make late replacements in the event of serious injury, at any time up to 24 hours before their first game.

OFFICIAL SONG
An official song has been created for every World Cup finals since 1962. On 24 January 2014, FIFA and Sony Music announced that the official song for the tournament will be "We Are One (Ole Ola)" by Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez and Claudia Leitte. Sony also launched a global music contest – entitled 'SuperSong' – to select a song for the competition's official album, One Love, One Rhythm. The contest allows any person to submit a song via a website, with the winning entrant chosen in February 2014 to be professionally recorded by the singer Ricky Martin. On 10 February 2014, American Elijah King was chosen with the song "Vida" ("Life", in English).A customized version of the song "Dare (La La La)" by Shakira, who provided the official song of the 2010 tournament, will be used as a secondary theme song. By the end of March, FIFA announced that the song "Dar um Jeito (We Will Find a Way)", written by Avicii, Carlos Santana, Wyclef Jean and Alexandre Pires, was selected as the official anthem of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The tatu-bola, an armadillo that defends itself from predators by rolling up into a ball, was chosen as the official mascot by FIFA at a ceremony organised by the local organising committee in September 2012. It was selected from 47 designs created by six Brazilian agencies after market research showed its appeal to the primary target audience of Brazilian children aged 5–12.

The then-unnamed mascot was first unveiled to the public during a segment of the Brazilian news show Fantástico. An online public vote was used to determine the name in which three potential names were offered, with the winning name being announced on 25 November 2012: 1.7 million people (about 48 per cent) voted for Fuleco, ahead of Zuzeco (31 per cent) and Amijubi (21 per cent).

"Fuleco" is a portmanteau of the words "Futebol" ("Football") and "Ecologia" ("Ecology") (in addition, nicknames ending with -eco are popular in Brazil). The two unsuccessful names were Amijubi ("Amizade" ("Friendship") and "Júbilo" ("Joy")) and Zuzeco ("Azul" ("blue") and "Ecologia").