Across the globe, high-stakes qualifiers are taking center stage. As teams vie to represent their confederations at the World Cup, they face a series of intense contests that test their mettle. While qualification systems differ, they all serve a common purpose: to identify the best representatives for football’s global tournament of dreams.
The first round of 2026 World Cup qualifying soft-launched in March, and will kick into full gear in September. The top seeds have already established a lead, while several countries are in a tight race to secure their spot.
In this phase, the 54 FIFA-affiliated nations are split into nine groups of five or six teams, which play each other in a hexa-format of home-and-away games over a span of three months in September and October. The top two in each group qualify for the World Cup, while the runners-up enter the inter-confederation playoffs.
In the second round, the seven highest-ranked teams – including Samoa and New Caledonia – were drawn into two four-team groups to play double round-robin home-and-away matches in October and November 2024. The winners in each group qualified for the World Cup, while the runners-up advanced to the fourth round, where they competed in a two-legged play-off tie to determine the Asian representation at the inter-confederation playoffs.
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