While some football confederations have already announced the first participants for the 2026 World Cup, in the United States, Canada and Mexico, in Europe the road to the World Cup begins today. UEFA members will compete for 16 of the 48 places at the largest football event ever.
The European teams are divided into 12 groups, with the winners of each advancing to the World Cup. The remaining four places will be determined by additional qualifiers between the second-placed teams in the groups and the best teams from the Nations League, which failed to find their way “across the pond” through direct qualification in the 12 groups.
The European qualifiers are also divided in a way. Groups A to F have four teams each and will not start the competition until September. These are the teams that have qualified for the quarter-finals of the Nations League.
Groups K - L start, including Montenegro, starting from the March window.
Six matches are scheduled for today in the Uefa zone. The first at 18pm sees San Marino host Cyprus in Group H, followed by Romania hosting Bosnia and Herzegovina at 20.45pm. Group K matches will also feature Andorra against Latvia and England against Albania, marking the debut of new coach Thomas Tuchel. In Group G, Malta host Finland and Poland host Lithuania.
Europe has 16 and Africa nine guaranteed World Cup participants. Egypt, Morocco and Iran are already almost certain to make it to the finals, while Australia and Asia are in a qualifying group with eight places, and it is already known that Japan and Australia will play in the 2026 World Cup.
There are six South American teams guaranteed to qualify for the World Cup, but Argentina is calm, as the current world champion is the leader with 25 points at the halfway point of the qualifiers. The “gauchos” will have two of their toughest matches in the March cycle, as they travel to Uruguay tonight and host Brazil four days later. Leo Messi and Lautaro Martinez will miss both matches due to injuries.
Since the USA, Canada and Mexico are guaranteed participants as hosts, they will compete for three additional visas in the CONCACAF zone, and the novelty is that for the first time Oceania will have one guaranteed representative, which will be decided by a play-off. In the semi-finals, New Caledonia plays against Tahiti, and New Zealand plays against Fiji. The winner of the final goes to the World Cup.
The last two participants will form an intercontinental playoff of six teams from five FIFA confederations, where there will not only be representatives from UEFA.
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