What’s happening?
The draw to determine the make-up of the European qualifier groups for the 2026 World Cup will be held in Zurich at 11am on Friday.
Sixteen European teams will qualify for the tournament which will be held across 16 cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States, culminating in the World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where Ireland beat Italy during the 1994 World Cup.
How will the draw work?
The 54 teams have been divided into five pots (seeded based on a mix of Nations League results and Fifa rankings) and will be drawn to make six groups of four and six groups of five.
Teams will play the others in their group twice over a home and an away leg.
But the draw gets a bit confusing due to the ongoing Nations League. The eight quarter-finalists (the Netherlands, Spain, Croatia, France, Denmark, Portugal, Italy and Germany) will only learn their European qualifiers groups after the two-leg Nations League quarter-finals are played next March. They will be in Pot 1, along with England, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria.
This is because the UNL quarter-final winners must be in a group of four and have the international dates free in March and June. The UNL quarterfinal teams appear as winners of / losers of ties (more to come on this). Along with the eight teams who are in the UNL QFs from Pot 1 there are two, Austria and Belgium, who will play a promotion/relegation playoff (PO) in March. Only England and Switzerland will not need March free.
In the original draw regulations all teams who need to play POs were to be prioritised into a group of four. Fifa updated the regulations at the end of November to remove this clause. It was deemed unfair because PO teams in Pots 2, 3 and 4 were going to be forced into harder groups - potentially against UNL QF winners from Pot 1, and high-ranked fellow PO teams from the other pots.
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What are the pots?
Pot 1: France, Spain, England, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria.
Pot 2: Ukraine, Sweden, Turkey, Wales, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Romania, Greece, Slovakia, Czechia, Norway.
Pot 3: Scotland, Slovenia, Republic of Ireland, Albania, North Macedonia, Georgia, Finland, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel.
Pot 4: Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Belarus, Kosovo, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Latvia, Lithuania.
Pot 5: Moldova, Malta, Andorra, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, San Marino.
From that, Ireland might want to avoid England and Greece again, if not just for the tedium of that same games, but Ireland have lost the last four games against Greece and lost 7-0 on aggregate to England in the Nations League. Nobody below pot four should be feared, but it might be best to avoid Nations League playoff opponents Bulgaria in pot four.
When will the qualifier games be played?
Games in the five-team groups will get under way next March and the four-team group matches will start in September.
As mentioned above, since the Nations League finals are set for June 4th-8th, the four teams involved will be placed in a four-team group to give them that later start-date in the European qualifiers.
All going to plan, the group fixtures will be wrapped up by November.
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How do teams qualify for the World Cup?
Direct qualification for the tournament will go to the 12 group winners.
The 12 group runners-up and the four highest-ranked ranked group winners from the 2024/25 Nations League that didn’t win or come second in their European qualifiers group go to the playoffs, from which four teams will qualify for the World Cup.
For the playoffs, the 16 teams will be drawn to make four groups of four. Each group will have a semi-final and final, the four final winners earning a spot at the World Cup.
When will the playoffs be played?
The eight playoff semi-finals are in the diary for March 26th, 2026, followed by the four finals on March 31st.
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