The 2026 World Cup takes shape in Washington with the draw that will define the path of each team in next summer’s World Cup. Like every four years, the eyes of the football world will be on the drums that will decide the fate of the 48 teams that will compete in the first World Cup with a tripartite venue between Mexico, the United States and Canada. The draw will define the 12 groups of the first phase of the tournament (named in alphabetical order from A to L) made up of four teams each and therefore, the rivals for the three games that, at least, each team will play in the World Cup.
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The drawing will take place on December 5 at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and will begin at noon local time
- 09:00 a.m. (California and the rest of the west coast of the United States)
- 11.00 (Mexico City)
- 12.00 (Colombia)
- 14.00 (Argentina)
- 18.00 (Spain)
Drums
The placement of each team in one of the four pots is not random, but rather responds to its place in the FIFA ranking, the classification that measures the performance of national teams and weights them from best to worst in descending order. Pot 1 is made up of the teams that occupy the first nine positions in the ranking, in addition to the three host countries: Mexico, the United States and Canada. The rest of the pots continue with the teams classified for the World Cup ordered according to their position in the ranking. Each group contains a selection from each drum.
- Bomb 1: Canada, Mexico, United States, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany
- Bomb 2: Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, Iran, Republic of Korea, Ecuador, Austria and Australia
- Bomb 3: Norway, Panama, Egypt, Algeria, Scotland, Paraguay, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Africa
- Bomb 4: Jordan, Cape Verde, Ghana, Curacao, Haiti, New Zealand, qualified A, B, C and D in the UEFA playoff; classified 1 and 2 in the intercontinental playoff
The draw, step by step
The World Cup draw will begin with the extraction of the three balls that correspond to the host teams, contained in pot 1 and differentiated from the rest by their colors: green (Mexico), red (Canada) and blue (United States). The Mexican team will be assigned in Group A, Canada in Group B and the United States in Group D.
After the hosts’ balls, the draw will continue with the extraction of the rest of the teams from the first pot that serve as seeds, including Spain and the world champion, Argentina. After exhausting the selections from the first pot, the draw follows the same procedure with the balls representing the teams from pot 2, 3 and 4, in the same order.
Restrictions
One of the new features of the draw is the separation of opposing teams for Spain and Argentina, the two highest ranked teams in the FIFA ranking. The restriction, a measure to avoid early crossings between them and guarantee the balance of the competition, implies that both teams could only meet until a hypothetical final as long as they advance as leaders of their group. The same principle applies to the roads of France and England, third and fourth in the world ranking.
Another key restriction in the formation of the groups is that no sector may contain two teams from the same confederation, except UEFA, which in this World Cup grants 16 tickets to the tournament.
Pot 4 and pending selections
With 42 teams qualified so far, pot 4 includes the last six places for the World Cup: four places correspond to the UEFA play-offs, while the other two to the intercontinental play-offs. The teams that obtain the last tickets will be known until the end of March 2026, almost four months after the rest of the participants meet their rivals, with defined venues and schedules.
The official World Cup calendar, one day later
Unlike previous draws, for this edition FIFA has decided to wait for the end of the draw to define both the venue and the start time of each match. The governing body of football explains that this allocation process aims to guarantee the best conditions for all teams, such as travel and broadcast schedules. Hence, the official calendar of the 2026 World Cup will be known one day after the draw, on Saturday, December 6.
