FIFA World Cup 26 Finals draw information

England will learn their FIFA World Cup 26 pathway on Friday 5 December 2025, when the draw for the finals takes place in Washington DC, USA.

The Three Lions sealed their place at next summer’s tournament in Canada, Mexico and USA with two qualifying games to spare following their 5-0 win over Latvia in October, and will now discover who they will play in the group stage at the draw.

Being staged at the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts in the USA’s capital city, the draw is scheduled for 5pm GMT and will be shown live on the FIFA+ channel.

There will be 42 of the qualified nations in the draw alongside a vacant six spaces that will be filled next year following the play-offs, which are scheduled to take place in March 2026 to complete the full line-up of 48 teams at the World Cup.

So far, we know that the host nations will be assigned to positions A1 (Mexico), B1 (Canada) and D1 (USA), and the remaining 39 teams have been allocated to four pots of 12 teams according to the FIFA Men’s World Ranking.

Lastly, the two FIFA World Cup 2026 Play-Off Tournament placeholders, as well as the four European play-off placeholders, will be allocated to pot 4.

Pot 1: Canada, Mexico, USA, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany

Pot 2: Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, IR Iran, Korea Republic, Ecuador, Austria, Australia

Pot 3: Norway, Panama, Egypt, Algeria, Scotland, Paraguay, Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa

Pot 4: Jordan, Cabo Verde, Ghana, Curaçao, Haiti, New Zealand, European Play-Off A, B, C and D, FIFA Play-Off Tournament 1 and 2

The draw will start with all the teams from pot 1 being drawn to groups A to L and then continue with pots 2, 3 and 4 in that order.

Beyond the group stages, there will be two separate pathways to the semi-finals and the four highest-ranked teams in the FIFA Men’s Ranking, when drawn, will have the following constraints: the highest-ranked team (Spain) and the second highest-ranked team (Argentina) will be randomly drawn into opposite pathways, and the same principle will apply to the third (France) and fourth (England) highest-ranked teams. This will ensure that, should they win their groups, the two highest-ranked teams will not meet before the final.

In principle, no group will have more than one team from the same confederation drawn into it. This applies to all confederations except UEFA, which is represented by 16 teams. Each group must have at least one, but no more than two UEFA teams drawn into it.

Four more nations will qualify from the UEFA play-offs, which will be contested with eight semi-finals and four finals, all played within the March 2026 international window as follows:

Wales or Bosnia and Herzegovina v Italy or Northern Ireland
Ukraine or Sweden v Poland or Albania
Slovakia or Kosovo v Turkiye or Romania
Czechia or Republic of Ireland v Denmark or North Macedonia

The remaining two slots will be filled from six teams in the shape of Bolivia, Congo DR, Iraq, Jamaica, New Caledonia and Suriname - at the FIFA World Cup 26 play-off tournament.

The FIFA World Cup 26 Finals will be staged between 11 June to 19 July 2026 across 16 cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle (USA); Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey (Mexico) and Toronto and Vancouver (Canada).

The World Cup final will be held in New York New Jersey Stadium on Sunday 19 July 2026.