Announcing the procedures for the 2026 World Cup draw

The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) announced the draw procedures to determine the identity of the four teams competing in the 12 groups for the 2026 World Cup, which for the first time will witness the participation of 48 teams.
The draw will be held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts on Friday, December 5, in the United States capital, Washington, in the presence of representatives of the teams that qualified for the tournament and are still competing for playoff tickets.
The lottery procedures stipulate that the teams of the host countries (Canada, Mexico and the United States of America) will be placed in Pot 1, while the rest of the 39 qualified teams will be distributed in four pots according to the world classification of men’s teams issued on November 19, 2025. The two balls allocated to the two teams that will qualify through the global playoff competitions and the four balls allocated to the teams that will qualify through the European playoff competitions for the 2026 World Cup will be in Pot 4.
Final draw pots for the 2026 World Cup
Pot 1: Canada, Mexico, USA, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany.
Pot 2: Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, Islamic Republic of Iran, Republic of Korea, Ecuador, Austria, Australia.
Pot 3: Norway, Panama, Egypt, Algeria, Scotland, Paraguay, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa.
Pot 4: Jordan, Cape Verde, Ghana, Curacao, Haiti, New Zealand, the four teams (A, B, C, D) who qualified from the European playoff, the two teams (A, B) who qualified from the global playoff.
Host countries Canada, Mexico and the United States of America will be identified by different colored balls, and when drawn, Mexico will be placed at the top of Group A (green ball), Canada at the top of Group B (red ball), and the United States of America will be at the top of Group D (blue ball), as originally stated in the tournament schedule issued on February 4, 2024. The remaining nine teams in Pot 1 will be assigned balls of the same color, and each will be placed at the top of the group in which they fall. The lottery.
FIFA said that, in order to ensure the principle of balance of competition, the process of preparing the match schedule witnessed the determination of two paths for the semi-finals. To ensure balance in the distribution of teams, the draw will include special restrictions that apply to the highest-ranked teams in the men’s world rankings table, so that the two best-ranked teams (Spain/first place) and (Argentina/second place) will be drawn randomly into two different paths, and the same principle will be adopted for both (France/third place) and (England/fourth place). This restriction would prevent the two best-ranked teams from facing each other before the final if they finished first in their groups.
In principle, the rule is that there should not be more than one team from the same continental confederation in the same group, which applies to all continental confederations, with the exception of the European Union, which is represented in the tournament with a total of 16 teams. Each group must include at least one European team and a maximum of two.
With regard to the teams that qualify through the global playoff competitions, and in order to comply with the general principle that it adopts, which stipulates that no group includes more than one team from the same continental confederation, the continental confederations restriction will be applied to all three teams within each of the two tracks associated with the two seats allocated to the global playoff in the fourth pot.