Look away now: Podcast 633 - Our World Cup 2026 draw

We always done since the earliest days of the podcast we conducted our own version of the draw for the 2026 World Cup in North America.

This tournament is unlike any other before with 48 teams and three host nations. For our draw, we used the same process that FIFA has used in the past, restriciting one team per confederation to each group (two for UEFA) and randomly selecting a team's psoition in the group. For constraints purposes, we treated the interconfederation play-off winners as the seeded nations - DR Congo for pathway 1 and Iraq for pathway 2 (this was the system used for the Women's World Cup 2023 draw). Here's how our draw came out:

GROUP A: Mexico (co-hosts), UEFA play-off C winner, Qatar, Senegal
GROUP B: Canada (co-hosts), South Korea, UEFA play-off D winner, Tunisia
GROUP C: Brazil, Algeria, Haiti, Iran
GROUP D: USA (co-hosts), Scotland, Interconfederation play-off 2 winner, Uruguay
GROUP E: Belgium, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Austria
GROUP F: Argentina, Curacao, Morocco, Saudi Arabia
GROUP G: Portugal, Croatia, South Africa, New Zealand
GROUP H: Germany, Uzbekistan, Ecuador, Cape Verde
GROUP I: France, Interconfederation play-off 1 winner, Paraguay, Switzerland
GROUP J: England, Australia, Ghana, Norway
GROUP K: Netherlands, UEFA play-off B winner, Colombia, Egypt
GROUP L: Spain, Panama, UEFA play-off A winner, Japan

The day after we recorded the official procedure for the draw was released with some very important differences. Firstly, seeded sides have been introduced: the top four nations in the FIFA rankings used to allocate the pots will be separated until the semi-finals (should they win their respective groups). The four seeded nations are Spain (1), Argentina (2), France(3) and England(4). The second difference to our draw (and WWC 23) is that the interconfederation playoff winners will be treated as all the nations taking part in the respective pathway. This may be because in the Women's World Cup in 2023 Panama ended up in a group with Jamaica. The third difference is administrative. Instead of a country's position in the group being allocated at random it is now determined before the draw. Link: The full draw procedure for World Cup 2026

So what difference does it make to our draw? Well mostly, not much, apart from pot 4 and the ordering of the teams.

For the seeded nations, each would be put into a separate quarter of the draw, with seeds 1 and 2 in separate halves, and so too seeds 3 and 4. You can see why it's been done, if all pot 1 sides finish top of their groups (and through the round of 32) there will be four all-pot 1 ties in the round of 16. The quarter finals should look like this.

C v A/L
J v B/K
H v D/G
F V I/E

Our draw allowed this to work until we drew Germany into group H. With two non-seeds already selected for that grouping, and with Argentina in that half of the draw, group H would have to be either France of England. So Germany would have to slot into group I while France, as next out of the hat, go into group H. The rest of the draw for pot 1 worked out as before.

So what about pot 4? Half the teams we picked out would have to be assigned to different groups. The second team out of the hat was the interconfederation play-off winner from Iraq's path, but as that pathway incudes Bolivia it couldn't go into group D so shifts into group E. That opened up Group D for Cape Verde to go into instead of being placed in group H, which went to the other interconfederation playoff winner. With group E complete Jordan go into group G, Ghana go into group I with New Zealand taking their place in group J.

Here it is the revised draw with the predetermined group placings:

GROUP A: Mexico (co-hosts), Qatar, Senegal, UEFA play-off C winner
GROUP B: Canada (co-hosts), UEFA play-off D winner, Tunisia, South Korea
GROUP C: Brazil, Iran, Haiti, Algeria
GROUP D: USA (co-hosts), Scotland, Uruguay, Cape Verde
GROUP E: Belgium, Interconfederation play-off 2 winner, Ivory Coast, Austria
GROUP F: Argentina, Morocco, Curacao, Saudi Arabia
GROUP G: Portugal, South Africa, Croatia, Jordan
GROUP H: France, Interconfederation play-off 1 winner, Uzbekistan, Ecuador
GROUP I: Germany, Switzerland, Ghana, Paraguay
GROUP J: England, Norway, Australia, New Zealand
GROUP K: Netherlands, UEFA play-off B winner, Egypt, Colombia
GROUP L: Spain, Japan, UEFA play-off A winner, Panama


The real thing takes place on Friday 5 December.