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400,000 Pakistani Workers to Be Trained for 2034 FIFA World Cup Projects
By Sayed Abdullah | June 22, 2026
The 2034 FIFA World Cup will be played in gleaming new stadiums across Saudi Arabia, but long before the first ball is kicked, the men who build those stadiums will have travelled from across the Arabian Sea. Pakistan is preparing to train and deploy between 300,000 and 400,000 workers for projects linked to the tournament, part of a broader push to capture a significant share of the vast labour demand that Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 has generated. Official documents outline plans to align workforce training with the anticipated needs of infrastructure development, aviation, tourism, and related service sectors between now and 2034. The scale is staggering. The ambition is clear. Pakistan wants to be the workforce behind the World Cup. Not as a spectator. As a builder.
For a country that has been sending workers abroad for decades, this is not a new role. But it is a bigger stage than any it has occupied before.
The Full Story
Saudi Arabia already dominates Pakistan's overseas employment landscape, and the numbers tell the story. In 2025 alone, the Kingdom received 530,256 Pakistani workers — nearly 70 percent of all overseas employment registrations for the year. The Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment registered 762,499 workers for overseas employment in total during 2025, and since 1972, more than 15 million Pakistanis have gone abroad through official channels to more than 50 countries. The Gulf Cooperation Council countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have absorbed more than 96 percent of those workers. The FIFA World Cup is simply the next, much larger chapter in a story that has been unfolding for half a century.
The government's plan is to ensure that this chapter is different. Not just in quantity, but in quality. Between July and March of the current fiscal year, 215,719 workers received soft-skills training aimed at improving adaptability, productivity, and global employability. The idea is simple: a Pakistani electrician working on a World Cup stadium should not just be a pair of hands. He should be a certified, skilled professional whose training is recognised internationally. That is the gap the government is trying to close. And the World Cup, with its eight-year runway, provides the timeline to do it.
Pakistan is also expanding labour partnerships beyond the Gulf. The Pakistan-EU Migration and Mobility Dialogue has produced concrete outcomes. Italy has announced a quota of 10,500 seasonal and non-seasonal workers for Pakistan over three years. Germany and Greece are moving toward formalising labour cooperation arrangements focused on skilled workers. These are not massive numbers compared to the Saudi figures, but they represent a strategic diversification. Pakistan's overseas employment is dangerously concentrated in a handful of Gulf states. Expanding into Europe reduces that risk and opens pathways for higher-skilled, higher-wage migration. The World Cup project is the anchor. The European partnerships are the long tail.
On the domestic side, the government is modernising the emigration process through digital reforms. The Pakistan Emigrant Management Framework, currently under development, aims to connect 14 relevant stakeholders — from the Bureau of Emigration to provincial labour departments — and streamline overseas employment procedures. The Digital HR Pool system has been operationalised to integrate biometric verification, job matching, and transparent recruitment mechanisms. These are the unglamorous, bureaucratic improvements that determine whether a worker from a village in Punjab or KP actually receives the job he was promised, or whether a middleman takes a cut and delivers nothing. The digital reforms are a recognition that the old system — paper-based, fragmented, and vulnerable to fraud — cannot handle the scale of what is coming. The World Cup will require speed, reliability, and transparency. The system is being rebuilt to provide all three.
Why This Moment Matters
The 2034 FIFA World Cup is not just a sporting event. For Saudi Arabia, it is the centrepiece of Vision 2030, a national project designed to transform an oil-dependent economy into a diversified global hub. The construction alone will require an army of workers — engineers, masons, electricians, plumbers, crane operators, surveyors, and thousands of labourers. The aviation and tourism sectors will need ground staff, hospitality workers, and logistics personnel. Pakistan, with its geographic proximity, its deep cultural and religious ties to the Kingdom, and its massive, youthful workforce, is uniquely positioned to supply that demand. But proximity alone is not enough. The workers must be trained. The recruitment must be transparent. The contracts must be fair. That is what the government's plan — imperfect as it may be in execution — is attempting to ensure.
There is also a deeper significance. For decades, Pakistani workers abroad have been associated with low-skilled, low-wage labour — construction workers in the Gulf, drivers in Dubai, domestic help in Riyadh. The World Cup offers a chance to change that perception. Skilled workers who are trained to international standards, who carry certifications that are recognised globally, can command higher wages and better conditions. The multiplier effect — the money they send home, the skills they bring back, the networks they build — could extend far beyond the tournament itself. A worker who spends two years on a World Cup site and returns with a certification and savings can start a business in Lahore or Peshawar. That is the long game. The World Cup is just the catalyst.
The Pakistani Connection
I remember a conversation I had in Karachi a few months ago, yaar, with a young electrician who had just returned from working on a construction project in Riyadh. He had spent two years there, sending money home each month, and had come back with enough savings to open a small repair shop in Korangi. The work had been hard, he said. The hours were long, the pay was decent but not generous, and the recruitment agent had taken a cut that still made him angry to talk about. But he had done it. And his younger brother was now asking how to get the same opportunity. That conversation captured everything about Pakistan's relationship with overseas labour — the sacrifice, the exploitation, the resilience, and the ambition. The World Cup project, if done right, could offer men like him a better deal. If done wrong, it will be the same old story, just on a larger scale.
For a Pakistani worker, the economics are compelling. A skilled electrician or plumber working on a World Cup site in Saudi Arabia can earn the equivalent of Rs. 150,000 to Rs. 250,000 per month, depending on the contract and the employer. That is several times what the same worker would earn in Pakistan. The recruitment cost — which can range from Rs. 100,000 to Rs. 300,000 depending on the agent — is the biggest barrier. The government's digital reforms, if they succeed in cutting out middlemen and reducing those costs, will be the difference between opportunity and exploitation. The workers who travel to Saudi Arabia for the World Cup will be the face of Pakistan in the world's largest infrastructure project. The question is whether they will be treated as valued professionals or as disposable labour. The answer depends on the policies being written right now, in Islamabad, not in Riyadh.
Do you know someone who has worked abroad, and what was their experience like? I would like to hear the stories that don't make it into the official statistics.
Sayed Abdullah is the founder and editor of Prime Pakistan. Based in Karachi, he writes about labour, migration, and the economic stories that shape Pakistani lives. Read more.
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Sources
- Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment — Official data on worker registrations and training.
- Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis — Policy documents on the FIFA World Cup workforce plan.
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