For the 2026 men’s football World Cup – the first with 48 teams – 28 national teams have qualified. Three (United States, Mexico and Canada) went there as host countries, the other 25 thanks to continental qualifying results. Cape Verde and New Zealand have already qualified, but not yet France and Germany, who played the necessary qualifiers to determine the remaining 20 teams. Despite the bad precedent, Italy may be among them, but like many teams, they will almost certainly have to make it through the play-offs in March. There will be some at European level, but also in intercontinental tournaments.
On November 20 there will be a play-off draw, on December 5 there will be a draw for the 12 World Cup groups, with several “holes”, considering that the play-offs will be played in March, but with a rather complicated mechanism.
Among the teams that are sure to go to the World Cup, there are teams from different continents. Or rather, of each of the more or less continental divisions of FIFA, the federation that regulates and organizes world football. Japan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Jordan, South Korea, Australia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have qualified from the AFC (confederation of most of Asia and parts of Oceania). New Zealand qualified from the OFC (Oceanian confederation, without Australia).
From CONMEBOL (South American confederation) the national teams of Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay and Uruguay qualified, therefore the teams of ten were in that group, with the seventh team still able to try to do it. It is much easier to qualify for a South American national team than a European team. For the CAF (African confederation) there will be Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Ghana, Cape Verde, South Africa, Ivory Coast and Senegal.
Even with some restrictions imposed by UEFA, each para-continental federation has freedom in deciding how to organize the play-offs to determine their rightful place. In South America – where there are 10 national teams, all more or less competitive – they, as per tradition, form one group; elsewhere, such as in Asia, there have been various phases of gradually reducing the number of teams.
Speaking of Asia, the AFC was criticized as Qatar and Saudi Arabia (teams from countries that hosted the World Cup in 2022 and will host in 2034) also qualified thanks to a series of events that went in their favor. Among other things, some rules were changed during the match to allow Saudi Arabia to play the deciding match at home, and to have more rest days than expected between one match and another.
There was some variation among the teams that qualified: from reigning champions Argentina to some teams appearing for the first time, such as Uzbekistan (recently coached by Fabio Cannavaro), Jordan and the small island nation of Cape Verde.
For now, only England has qualified from UEFA (therefore from the European federation, although with wider and looser borders compared to the European political area). Another 15 teams are absent: 11 will qualify by finishing first in their respective groups (some already tonight, others between 16 and 18 November), the last 4 teams through the play-offs. The number of European teams is still small because there are still two games remaining in UEFA’s group stage – which involves a total of 54 teams – and because in many cases the situation in the groups remains somewhat uncertain.
Currently, apart from England, the following teams are ranked first in their group: Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria, Norway, Belgium and Croatia. There are teams that are almost certain to finish in first place, such as Norway or Portugal, but there are also big teams that are still not sure of qualifying (such as Germany and France) and a group with the top two teams on the same points: Scotland and Denmark, who on November 18 will play a match in Glasgow that could be decisive.
In short, the situation is still developing, but currently among these teams, along with Italy, there are teams of different levels: some of them are relatively weaksuch as Kosovo and North Macedonia, other more complete countries such as Türkiye and the Czech Republic. At the play-off round in March, the 12 runners-up will also be joined by the 4 2024-2025 Nations League group winners who did not finish the group qualifying stage in first or second place (and were therefore offered a further chance to reach the World Cup). Currently they are Wales, Romania, Sweden and Northern Ireland. But a lot can still happen: from San Marino to Germany, there are still plenty of teams that could make it to the play-offs.
Between the groups and the play-offs, 16 teams will go to the World Cup from UEFA: England, of course, the other 11 first-place teams and the 4 play-off winners. This will increase the number of qualifying teams to 43 (28 teams currently plus 15 teams coming from Europe).
To reach 48, 5 people are missing: 3 will come from CONCACAF, the Confederation of North American, Central American and Caribbean Football; The final 2 matches of the intercontinental play-off tournament, are also drawn in November and played in March.
Currently the three teams that have qualified directly from CONCACAF are Suriname, Jamaica and Honduras. But there are missing games and some others can still be played, including the tiny state of Curaçao: a population of less than 200 thousand inhabitants and a surface area of 444 square kilometers (roughly twice the size of the Island of Elba). The coach is Dick Advocaat, a 78 year old Dutchman who has coached the national teams of the Netherlands, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea.
Dick Advocaat on June 21 in Houston, Texas (Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)
The situation in CONCACAF qualifying is indeed very uncertain and therefore exciting (of course everything is relative, and objectively you have to be very passionate about football to find it. interesting Suriname – El Salvador, or Bermuda – Curacao). There are three groups of four teams each, all teams still have two games to play and many still have a chance to qualify. It is possible, for example, that up to four teams from the Caribbean will arrive at the World Cup.
Then there is the intercontinental play-off tournament which is the last chance for non-European teams to qualify for the World Cup. Without emphasis or imagination, FIFA calls it the “FIFA Play-off tournament”. It will be held in Mexico in March, in Monterrey and Guadalajara, and 6 teams from 5 continental confederations will play it: one Asian team (United Arab Emirates or Iraq), one African team (between Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Nigeria) and two from CONCACAF (where, as already written, everything is still very open). Bolivia and New Caledonia are confirmed to play in the “FIFA Play-off tournament”. The draw for this tournament will also take place on November 20, just before the UEFA play-offs.
Qualifying begins in September 2023, less than a year after the end of the World Cup in Qatar, and involves – among all the confederation phases – more than 200 national teams (most of which will not travel to the World Cup), for almost a thousand matches played and, now, more than two thousand goals scored.
Instead, the 48 teams involved in the World Cup will play Alone 104 matches.
– Read also: How the play-offs work to qualify for the Football World Cup
