FIFA World Cup 2026 Draw: What Fans Need To Know

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Thurs. Dec. 4, 2025: The road to the FIFA World Cup 2026 Draw becomes clearer tomorrow, Friday, December 5th, when the official draw takes place in Washington, D.C. The ceremony will sort the expanded 48-team field into 12 groups of four ahead of the tournament, which runs from June 11th to July 19th across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Fans can watch the draw live at 12 p.m. ET on FOX, Telemundo, TSN and FIFA.com.

Final preparations are made as FIFA World Cup 2026 Final Draw signage is displayed outside the Kennedy Center on December 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Forty-two nations have already qualified, including hosts USA, Canada and Mexico, along with global powers such as Argentina, France, England, Spain, Brazil, Germany and Portugal. Six spots remain open and will be decided in March through UEFA and inter-confederation playoffs.

Teams are seeded into four pots based on the November 2025 FIFA Men’s World Rankings. Pot 1 includes the host nations and top-ranked sides, while Pot 4 contains lower-ranked qualifiers, UEFA playoff placeholders and two inter-confederation playoff entrants. FIFA rules ensure each group contains at least one European team and no more than two.

DRAW PROCEDURES

The Final Draw procedures stipulate that the hosts Canada, Mexico and the USA will be allocated to pot 1, and the 39 remaining qualified teams will be allocated to the four pots of 12 teams each according to the FIFA/Coca-Cola Men’s World Ranking issued on Wednesday, November 19th. 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 begin with all the teams from pot 1 being drawn to groups A to L. It will then continue with pots 2, 3 and 4 in that order.

Draw constraints

For pot 1, Canada, Mexico and the USA, as the host countries, will be identified by different coloured balls and, when drawn, will be assigned to position A1 for Mexico (green ball), B1 for Canada (red ball) and D1 for the USA (blue ball), as already established per the match schedule released on 4 February 2024. The remaining nine top-ranked teams in pot 1 will be identified by nine balls of the same colour and automatically allocated to position 1 of the group into which they are drawn.

To ensure competitive balance, two separate pathways to the semi-finals have been established when developing the match schedule. In order to have a balanced distribution of the teams, the four highest-ranked teams in the FIFA/Coca-Cola 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.

The 2026 tournament will be the biggest in history, featuring 104 matches across 16 venues, with 78 games played in the United States. The group stage runs from June 11th–27th, followed by knockout rounds leading up to the July 19th final.