It will be the first football World Cup to have been held in South America since the 1978 FIFA World Cup, which was held in Argentina, and this will be the first time consecutive World Cups have been staged in the southern hemisphere. Brazil also will become the first nation to break the well-established chain of allowing a European nation to host the World Cup Finals every eight years.

On 7 March 2003, the world football body FIFA announced that the tournament would be held in South America for the first time since Argentina hosted the 1978 FIFA World Cup, in line with its policy of rotating the right to host the World Cup amongst different confederations. On 3 June 2003, CONMEBOL announced that Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia wanted to host the 2014 World Cup finals. By 17 March 2004, the CONMEBOL associations had voted unanimously to adopt Brazil as their sole candidate. Brazil formally declared its candidacy in December 2006 and Colombia did so as well a few days later. The Argentina bid never materialized. On 11 April 2007, Colombia officially withdrew its bid making Brazil the only official candidate to host the event in 2014.