Lessons Learned from the Gulf’s Hosting of the Global Mega Events FIFA 2022 Doha and EXPO 2020 Dubai

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In 2023, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosted two major international events following their successful delivery of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Doha and Expo 2020 (World’s Fair) in Dubai.  Doha’s International Horticultural Exposition (Expo 2023) and Dubai’s “Conference of Parties” climate conference (COP28) would not have been possible without the physical infrastructure, human capital, and diplomatic experience from their prior hosting of the World Cup and World’s Fair. 

As the United States prepares to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup—along with Canada and Mexico—and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, it should review the lessons learned from Qatar and the UAE’s historic global mega events.  North America has a unique opportunity to learn from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) hosts, and in turn to pass on those lessons to Saudi Arabia as it prepares to host EXPO 2030 and FIFA 2034.

The World’s Fair, the Summer Olympics, and the FIFA World Cup are the three most widely attended events in the world.[1]  Prior to 2021, none of these had ever taken place in the Middle East before, or North Africa or South Asia for that matter.  However, the UAE made history by becoming the first Middle Eastern nation to host the world’s fair in 2021-2022—delayed by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic[2]—and Qatar shortly followed suit by hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup.  Both of these events took place with in-person attendees, unlike the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

These three global mega events have incredibly long lead times: a decade is the norm.  Given the long lead, neither Doha nor Dubai could have predicted how external events, such as a global pandemic or geopolitical fissures, would impact their delivery.  Both countries also had to address socioeconomic issues such as worker welfare, advances in LGBTQ rights and social mores around alcohol consumption.  Future hosts, particularly countries with Muslim populations, such as Saudi Arabia, will also have to deal with these issues in the future.

This report expands on the first inter-event comparison of these two global mega events in popular or academic literature, which the author published in 2023.[4]  Given the UAE and Qatar’s proximity and similar political-economic systems and culture, it is worth examining their bid narratives, response to external stimuli, and innovation on event type to find areas of commonality and divergence.  That report built on others’ work on why countries host these events to focus on the how of their implementation.  Motivations for hosting these events generally fall into three categories: nation branding (establishing a country’s narrative), nation building (infrastructure and human capacity) and projecting soft power.  This report goes one step further in identifying lessons that apply to all global mega event hosts as more countries, particularly developing nations, adopt global mega events as part of their public diplomacy strategies.  This is especially relevant in an era of competing powers’ vying for influence in a new, non-aligned world.