Everything you need to know about the 2026 World Cup draw
by Geoffrey Ejiga | by Cydias Aujard
Understanding the 2026 World Cup Draw
We're in for the biggest World Cup tournament to date, as 48 teams will partake, which is 16 more than the 2022 WC in Qatar. 42 teams have already booked a place, and there are six more slots up for grabs. Four spots will be won through the play-offs, while the other two will be won through the inter-confederation paths.
For bettors, the tournament extension makes it even trickier to pick an outright winner. Still, SportyTrader’s team of football experts already has the 2026 World Cup predictions in, which you can check out.
The 2026 World Cup will be using a “pot system” based on the most recent FIFA world rankings. The 48 teams are split into four 12-team pots, which have already been decided.
Along with three host nations, the top-nine ranked teams are placed in Pot 1, the next 12 teams in the rankings fill up Pot 2, and the same goes for Pot 3 and 4. The only difference is that the final six TDB playoff winners will be among the Pot 4 teams.
Which Teams are in Which Pots?
Pot 1: Canada, Mexico, USA, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany
Pot 2: Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, 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
Splitting The Pot: From 4 Pots to 12 Groups
The draws on Friday will place each team from Pot 1 to 4 among 12 four-team groups. The host countries, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, have already been drawn to Groups D, B, and A, respectively. The draws will take place chronologically. So, it will start from Pot 1 teams, and only when they've been drawn into their respective groups will draws for Pot 2, 3, and 4 commence.
As you may already know, teams in the group stages will battle against one another in three games for a knockout spot. 32 teams will advance, which will consist of the top two teams from each group and then the eight best third-place teams.
FIFA’s New Plan For Competitive Balance
FIFA has tweaked the draw format to keep things fair and to avoid having the strongest sides crash into each other too early. The idea is simple. The four highest-ranked teams in the world get split across two different paths to the semi-finals. Spain sits at the top of the rankings, and Argentina sits right behind.
One will be placed on one side of the bracket, and the other will land on the opposite side. The same approach will be used for France and England, who are the next two in the rankings. If all four teams top their groups, they will only meet in the later rounds and not earlier in the tournament.
For the rest of the field, things follow a clear pattern. Pots 2, 3, and 4 each come with a preset map that decides where a team goes in its group. A team’s slot is tied to the pot it comes from and the group it lands in. That structure keeps the draw tidy and stops any confusion once the balls start coming out.
There is also a strong effort to avoid packing too many teams from the same region into one group. No group can have more than one team from the same confederation. UEFA is the only exception because it has sixteen teams in the tournament. Every group must have at least one and can have up to two UEFA teams.
The two placeholders for the FIFA playoff tournament follow the same rule. Each placeholder in Pot 4 comes from a mini path with three possible teams. All three must respect the confederation rule so that no group ends up with two teams from the same region. This keeps every group balanced and prevents one region from stacking up in a single pool.
