On Tuesday, FIFA finalized seeding and procedures for the 2026 World Cup draw, including two new wrinkles with implications for the title favorites and co-hosts.
As it did for the 2025 Club World Cup, FIFA will separate the tournament into two “pathways” and ensure that the two top-ranked teams, Spain and Argentina, will go to opposite sides of the knockout round bracket — meaning they could not meet until the World Cup final if they win their respective groups.
FIFA has also pre-determined the positions that teams from each pot will occupy in each group — meaning the U.S., Canada and Mexico already know the order of their games. The U.S., for example, will open against a Pot 3 team, then play its second game against a Pot 2 team, and its group finale against a Pot 4 team.
The rest of the draw, however, will fall in line with precedent. All four pots will be seeded based on the FIFA rankings, with the six to-be-determined playoff winners — four from Europe, two from an inter-confederation playoff in March — all sent to Pot 4. (The other 42 of the 48 teams have already qualified.)
What are the pots?
- Pot 1: United States, Mexico, Canada, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany
- Pot 2: Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, Iran, South 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, Curaçao, Haiti, New Zealand, UEFA Playoff Qualifier 1, UEFA Playoff Qualifier 2, UEFA Playoff Qualifier 3, UEFA Playoff Qualifier 4, Inter-Confed Playoff Qualifier 1, Inter-Confed Playoff Qualifier 2
As usual, no two teams from the same confederation can share a group, with the exception of Europe, which will place one team in each group and a second team in four of the 12 groups.
The primary losers of FIFA’s announcement are the European playoff teams, who will likely feel underseeded in Pot 4. Italy, ranked 12th in the world, would have been a Pot 2 team if it had qualified directly; instead, if Italy wins its playoff, it will essentially be seeded alongside 82nd-ranked Curaçao and 84th-ranked Haiti.
The draw will begin at noon ET (5pm GMT; 9am PT) next Friday, December 5, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Over the 24 hours or so after the draw concludes, FIFA will then determine and release the World Cup schedule, with each match assigned to a specific stadium and kickoff time.
Playoff winners complicate World Cup draw seeding
Before 2018, pots were determined by geography. After the host(s), the defending champion and top-ranked teams were placed in Pot 1 (or Pot A), the rest were split up by confederation rather than ranking. This was FIFA’s relatively simple mechanism to separate countries from the same region — or, in Europe’s case, ensure that no more than two could be in the same group.
By 2018, though, an algorithm could do that. FIFA began seeding the entire draw, with the host and the best nations in Pot 1, the next-best teams in Pot 2, and the eight lowest-ranked in Pot 4.
By now, that seeding concept is ingrained and assumed. Ahead of 2026, the question was how to deal with six World Cup spots that remain unfilled. Four European playoffs and two inter-continental playoffs, to fill those final spots, will take place in March. FIFA officials, therefore, had multiple options: Should they place all six playoff teams in Pot 4? Or seed them, based on either an average ranking of the possible winners or the ranking of the best possible winner?
FIFA chose to keep them in Pot 4 to reward the 42 teams that have qualified directly. That decision, though, could make some groups significantly more difficult than others.
Co-hosts learn order of World Cup group games
At previous World Cups, in addition to randomly drawing teams into groups, FIFA would randomly select a team’s position within its group. Pot 1 teams always occupied Position 1, but when, say, Croatia is drawn from Pot 2, it could go into Position 2, 3 or 4 — which would, in turn, determine the sequence of its group games.
For the 2026 World Cup, instead, those positions have been pre-determined — in part to speed up the draw, in part to ensure a balanced distribution of matches throughout the group stage, a FIFA official said on a Zoom with reporters Tuesday.
This means that the U.S. men’s national team now knows it will conclude group play against a Pot 4 team — potentially the weakest opponent in its group — on Thursday, June 25, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
Mexico’s national team will play its games in the same order:
- Game 1 vs. Pot 3
- Game 2 vs. Pot 2
- Game 3 vs. Pot 4
Canada, on the other hand, will get its presumed weakest opponent first and its toughest opponent last:
- Game 1 vs. Pot 4
- Game 2 vs. Pot 3
- Game 3 vs. Pot 2
FIFA separates top seeds in knockout rounds
At previous World Cups, there were no restrictions on knockout matchups. Even if there were two favorites head and shoulders above the rest of the field, they could meet in the round of 16 or quarterfinals.
In 2026, that won’t happen — unless the favorites slip up and finish second or third in their respective groups.
FIFA’s draw procedure will ensure that Spain and Argentina, the top two seeds, get placed in groups whose winners will go to opposite sides of the knockout bracket.
It will then put one of the teams ranked 3 and 4 — England and France — on one side of the bracket, and the other team on the other side. This means that England and France, should they win their groups, also could not meet until the final, and neither could meet Spain or Argentina until the semifinals.
These restrictions could confuse viewers, but will reward teams who’ve been dominant in World Cup qualifying and other recent tournaments — if they remain dominant through the World Cup group stage.
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