EXPLAINED! The NEW World Cup FORMAT for 2026...🏆 

At least Italy has a chance of qualifying

I like this format change. I have never been a fan of three team groups because it could lead to another Disgrace of Gijón-esque incident. Having four team groups avoids that from happening by having both matches in Matchday 3 begin at the same time.

Third place teams going through is bad news, pretty much all big teams will go through this way

Expanding the group stage means teams like Guatemala, Uzbekistan, Mali and New Zealand, who usually narrowly miss out, will finally get to play at the World Cup. Although these 16 additional teams will weaken the groups, it's great that they get their chance. But with this system, only 16 teams (guess who?) get knocked out in the groups and 32 advance. So it's going to take 72 largely pointless games just to weed out a handful of minnows. Do FIFA realise how boring that is going to be? Now, if only 16 teams advance and 32 get knocked out, then you'd have a really exciting group stage, and we could go straight to the last 16 as we have done until now.

I dont like that some of the 3rd place teams go through still. It removes a lot of the excitement from the group stages and rewards mediocrity. Let's be honest this is all about more games which equals more money. With more games to play for the teams that reach the final it will be harder to win than ever before. Plus this will have a knock on effect on club players with the risk of injury etc. This is my own personal opinion though.

I like the look of this new format gives more nations the chance to get involved and more matches to watch is always a plus

3rd place teams going trough might be bad, but overall its better than having three teams a group leading to collusion. I think the teams had to increase eventually bcs Africa really needs more than just 5 teams. So not the worst idea to expand.

For anyone who still doesn’t understand the new format, think of the newest format of the Euros (so the 24 team edition) but with double the teams

I like that they’re more teams playing. And playing in North America, there will be no ban on booze at the games. And these countries and cities will be fun to travel to. NY, Miami, LA, Vancouver, Dallas, Mexico City.

Thank god they didn’t stick with 3 teams in a group

Now this sounds like a World cup !

First the UCL starting 2024, then the WC in 2026. Why do they feel the need to saturate and mess with winning formulas?

That's the best decision with 48 teams People should remember Ecuador, Saudi Arabia,Tunisia, Iran, and other countries who played well or at least played a game well or countries who could be better if they had a little better chance like Uruguay, Germany and Belgium Those nations deserved a more chance, and this system will give them this one last chance But in return, Fifa should give the best 8 1st teams out of the 12 groups a game with those best 8 third teams cause in the end they still are 3rd or their Group

When you have things like this, the champions League re format, conference league, nations league You wonder why the super league came around

Thirty-two teams has to be held as the ideal number of participants in a tournament. If 48 have to be included, then have an invitational prelude to open the world cup involving "Class B" qualifiers notionally representing nations 17 through 48. "Class A" qualifiers essentially receive a bye into the main tournament. Play those invitational prelude matches in two legs with aggregate score determining the winners. Those winners then advance to the main 32 nation tournament. Moving forward for future world cups, determine Class A and Class B qualifiers during prequalification.

I just love how this guy explains stuff. He's such an eloquent fella

With 8/12 of third place teams going through surely this is going to turn the group stage into a non-event and most teams will just play not to lose each game?

God I hate competitions with a team count being a multiple of 12. The bar for advancing to the knockouts is simply too low. Just to put things into perspective: there will be 72 matches played in the group stage to eliminate 16 teams, only for the same number of teams to be eliminated in just 16 games next round. To be honest it would be far better if the world cup expanded even further to 52 (top 6 out of 13 3rd placed teams advancing) teams or even 56 (top 4 out of 14 3rd placed teams advancing) teams, because then the bar wouldn't be on the floor but at the same time it would also make advancing to the knockouts fairer because remember: there are 3 matches in the group that a team doesn't play and has no control over which also determine the standings of that team. It's mathematically possible to come 2nd with 2 points and it's also mathematically possible to come 3rd with 6 points. That's why I think it's a good thing to give teams that finished 3rd because of bad luck a small safety net, but allowing 2/3 of teams in 3rd place to advance? That's ridiculous, as it allows teams with just 3 points and an abysmal goal difference to advance.

3rd place teams going through in my opinion does not change the issue of collusion potential, it just changes which teams are involved. Teams in group L will finish the group stage last, and so know exactly what they need to finish 3rd and qualify. Also, political clashes that would be prohibited to be in the same group could be affected by this as well. Let's say the first 11 groups have finished, Bosnia are the 8th best 3rd place team as it stands, and the last group contains Croatia. Croatia have already qualified for the knockouts with 6 points, and are playing the team occupying 3rd place on 3 points. However, this 3rd placed team needs a draw to finish 3rd and qualify because their goal difference is not good enough. So, Croatia deliberately draw the last match so that the 3rd place team in their group finishes on 4 points and so demotes Bosnia to the 9th best 3rd place team. Unless you plan to have all 12 groups' final games played at the same time, which is completely ridiculous, you will have collusion in this format as well. There is a perfect example of this that happened in WC 2022 qualifying. Tajikistan were going to be the 2nd best team in the group, and because of the withdrawal of North Korea from a different group, their results against the bottom placed team would not count towards the outcome of the best 2nd placed teams. Tajikistan would have nowhere near enough points to ever challenge to be one of the top 5 of 8 best 2nd place teams with their 7 points from 6 included games, so would stand no chance of progressing. However, they had managed to lose one of their games against Myanmar, who were in a close fought battle for 4th place with Mongolia. Both Myanmar and Mongolia were in a battle over 4th and 5th place, with both winning the home fixture against the other. Since Tajikistan had lost to Myanmar, if Myanmar finished last in the group, Tajikistan would have 10 points contributing to their best 2nd place team record, whereas if Mongolia finished last, they would only have 7. With 2 games to go (different because of the 5 team group), they both had Myanmar to play (as well as Japan, which was assumed already as a loss). Kyrgyzstan, the 3rd place team in the group and close political ally, had the same 2 fixtures left, plus an exxtra game vs Mongolia due to the 3 team group. Kyrgyzstan didn't really stand any chance of progressing even if they did finish 2nd due to them only picking up 1 point from both fixtures against Tajikistan. Funnily enough, Kyrgyzstan's first game of the 3, which was against Mongolia, was lost at home. This meant that Mongolia vs Myanmar would come down to goal difference assuming no slip ups occurred. Hours later, Tajikistan expectedly lost to Japan. In the next game, Kyrgyzstan then managed to beat Myanmar 8-1 away from home, meaning Myanmar were sent bottom and therefore Tajikistan stood a chance of qualifying. Since Mongolia had already played all of their games, they only needed to beat Myanmar to ensure that the exact scenario talked about happened, any extra goals meant nothing because the goal difference wouldn't be carried over to the 2nd place teams table, and Myanmar's goal difference was now already bad enough that any loss would see them bottom. It ended up making no difference though, despite Tajikistan's 4-0 final day win over Myanmar, as they ended as the 6th best 2nd placed team, missing out by 4 goal difference to Lebanon. But, do you really expect me to believe that Kyrgyzstan would lose at home to Mongolia when their ally needed the result to be able to qualify, and then beat a supposedly similar level opposition (in fact, according to the fifa world rankings, a team who were actually 50 places better) by 7 goals away the next game when the win did suit their allies, and that they didn't try to fix it?

I just naturally like this man so much honestly. His reports and his voice. I don't even know his name 🤦. May we all witness 2026 World Cup with good health and happiness.

I look forward to hopefully seeing the Republic of Ireland in a World Cup for the first time in over 20 years!

I'm a Northern Ireland fan, and despite great attacking football in Euro 2016 qualification, their defensive approach to the tournament proper was awful to see. Yet, through one decent display against an awful Ukraine team, they qualified. Do we really want to see those teams in the knockout rounds...? Already in 2022, there were a lot of non-events in the round of 16.

If there's more matches is there more time in between to rest ie longer tournament???? Doubt it

Ok so I'll just start watching the WC starting with the round of 16. Good to know

Gonna need a bigger wallchart!

Every country of those 211 currentrly has the chance to qualify for the world cup every 4 years. If you don't make it it simply means you weren't good enough. I'm from Ireland, I watch the qualifying games and hope we get in. If we get in next time it won't mean nearly as much because it's far easier..

It's criminal Europe isn't getting more than 16 berths! At least 18, if not 20, should go to Europe in this format, as Asia and North America do not have enough good teams for 8 or 9 spots! NA has 3-4 good sides, and Asia has about 6 of them - some of those are really good, like Japan, but anyone else from NA and Asia, like Uzbekistan, Trinidad or Vietnam, would get decimated 15-0 by the likes of France, whereas far more decent European and South American sides will still miss the tournament... Happy for Africa though, and for Oceania finally getting one direct spot - good for them, as Africa especially really deserved more spots!

Hate this whole ‘best 3rd place teams’ rule. If u come 3rd in a group of 4, u don’t deserve to advance, this ruined the euros. What’s the point in the group stage?

That 3rd place teams going through is crap … that’s gonna kill the excitement and teams won’t try as hard to finish top2

I think it’s great it gives more chances to team that never get to play on the big stage

The very best teams in the world won't have any problem with fan engagement, and those teams will generally play a nice amount of games. Most qualified teams at the WC, however, are not among the truly elite. Engaging those fan bases is important, and this format grants a sliver of hope to roughly ten or twelve additional fan bases. Those fan bases also get to experience at least one or two additional games, each of which are among the most important games their team will play in a 4 year cycle. If you ask me, I'd be in favor of expanding the process even more- and here's how. Let's reduce the number of automatic qualifying spots by just a bit for all confeds. Except Oceania, they can keep their one. Substantially increase the number of play-in teams from all confeds, and use an opportune window prior to the WC at the site of the WC in order to stage a giant fancy play-in tournament. Make a point of grouping the play-in teams by region but not necessarily by confed. You probably have three or four groups, but they're all pretty large. If you win the group, you're in automatically. After that, maybe there's a knockout process to determine the additional qualifiers. I see several versions of upside for this process. One- it can engage a pretty large number of fan bases that are able to feel like they're on the verge of WC qualification. Two- dress rehearsal for the host nations. And three- instead of simply declaring the number of qualifiers that each confed should have, we settle it on the field.

Italian fans will be happy

Well done on the new format

I had a feeling this format change would happen. The main reason is that more games means more money.

Problems - Too easy to qualify in 3rd Place so 1st Round becomes a Warm-Up for Big Teams e.g. Copa America use this format. Too many Knockout games so the Tournament becomes a blur of endless matches. Solutions - The human mind likes to group things together to remember them, so here are 2 solutions - 4 Mini-Tournaments in Canada W-USA E-USA Mexico then 4 Winners to Semi-Finals. 12 Groups of 4 = 2 Qualify. 6 Groups of 4 = 1 Qualify + 2 best Runners-Up (this would be intense). QF-SF-FINAL.

48 teams. I'm sure people will be keen to tune in to watch Uzbekistan vs San Marino and the like.

My idea for a 48 team tournament would be: 12x4 Groups Group Winner goes through, with the 8 best runners up going into a Play-off for a place in the Round of 16 and so on from there... It's adds up to about 92 games, and to win the thing outright, you'll need to get through 7 or 8 games depending where you finish in your group

This demotivates the top team to go for top of the group and more importantly cheapens the value of being the top 2 seeds of each group . My suggestion is that there top seed of each group automatically advances to the round of 16, and then 2 second best seeds play for 1 spot of the remaining 4 spots, so they play one extra game, and then the remaining 10 second seeds plus two top 3rd seeds (12 teams) play for the remaining 3 spots where each team has to play extra two games to get to the round of 16, this way only two top 3 seeds have a chance to play in the playoff rather than 8 which I think is too many.

They should’ve stuck with 16 groups 3 teams, it would make the group games more exciting as you have to go for it from the first match Never liked the 3rd place team going through , teams will settle for draws making the group stages boring & you’ll end up with a winner like Portugal in Euro 2016 who were awful , drew all 3 group games & pretty much bungled their way to the title

So happy back to summer

I would have preferred 8 groups of six but with only 3 games played per team

Just do a world cup with all the countries at this point

Why is everyone acting like other countries couldn't get into the WC before? That's what the WC qualifiers were for. If those countries wanted to compete then they should've won more of their qualifying games. This new format creates the issue of the group stage being pointless. Teams don't have to worry about winning anymore as a draw every game still gives them a great chance of getting to the knockouts. Group stage becomes less exciting and more of a joke. That's not to mention that 7 games in such a short time span was already very taxing on the players. Having 8 games just makes it a more outrageous ask. Don't fix what isn't broken.

Personally I only find football bearable at the most elite level. 48 teams means a lot of drab games just to weed out 1/3 of the participants. FIFA likes cash that's obvious but the 32-team format worked well.

I understand that this is just Fifa making more money. But this isn't like them expanding the Club World Cup or UEFA with the UCL. For the finalists it's just one more game and it gives other less gifted nations a chance to join in on the biggest party in world sports. My biggest issue is the 3rd place teams going through. I'm all for more countries qualifying for the tournament but it should remain 1st and 2nd go through

The final is one day before my birthday !

My love for football has all but died it used to be so great and now it’s just changing every week, why can’t we have normal people who are in touch with the average football fan making these decisions it’s disgusting It’s really depressing.

I don't like the expansion, but this is what FIFA has come to. Also, I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We will have more matches, which is great because there are plans to expand and upgrade several of our footballing facilities in parts of the city. I hope a European powerhouse plays a match or two in Toronto.

We all know FIFA is doing this for money and not for the development of football globally

2026 world cup is a bad idea Traveling distance and the long distance between stadiums it's going to be hard for players and fans as well.

This is an excellent decision on the part of FIFA. The only other change I wish they would make is the allocations. I wish the AFC (Asia) and OFC (Oceania) would merge to form an AOFC. Then I would redistribute the allocations in this fashion... AOFC: 10 teams CAF (Africa) : 10 teams CONCACAF: 4 teams CONMEBOL (South America) : 6 teams UEFA (Europe) : 16 teams Host Confederation: +1 The 48th team would be the winner of a four-team two round playoff between... 11th place AOFC team 11th place CAF team 5th place CONCACAF team 7th place CONMEBOL team Each round would have a home and away leg. EDIT: On second thought, I'd add one more automatic spot to CONCACAF (making it 5 teams) and take away a spot from UEFA (making it 15 teams). The 6th-placed CONCACAF team would battle for the 48th WC spot.

At this point there should be a knockout with every single country🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I completely agree with improving the Africa/Asia allocation. Just not another that interrupts a season please (although Qatar was class)

This 48 team format is better.. Having 9 or 10 African countries in the world cup would lovely ♥️

The bigger the entrants into the finals the worse the Qualifying…..everyone gets through, so whats the point

They're new MLS expansion teams in USA, Mexico, & Canada: New Orleans, Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland & more!⚽⚽⚽⚽⚽⚽

Well tbh there is good news and bad news in my opinion. The good news FIFA done the decent thing and kept to 4 teams. The bad news is there will be too many matches and with the USA and Canada having multiple time zones this is going to be a headache. As for third place, true it is a backdoor should the likes of France, Germany, England, Spain etc finish third but simultaneously it also gives smaller teams another bite at the apple. For example Scotland who never qualified for the knockouts in their history have a chance of doing it should they reach the 2026 edition.

Great for the smaller nations and FIFA but player fitness and well-being will be negatively affected by the increase in games.

2026 WC Group A's opening day's results: Brazil 12 Belarus 0 Nigeria 6 Jamaica 1

Are we going to talk international/ war crimes of the hosts?

4 teams have to play an extra match because the 3rd place match which should be scrapped to make it 103 games. Either way the extra match shouldn’t be too much of a problem, if at all because they shortened the World Cup prep time from 23 days to 16. And the World Cup itself will be lengthened a week. So 4 teams play 8 matches in 38-39 days instead of 7 in 31-32 days, doesn’t sound too unreasonable to me. Of course it’s easy for me to say, I’m not running around a pitch for 90+ minutes in 80-90 degree heat. I admit it’s a not a perfect format, and you can end up with a really unbalanced bracket of 32 where it’s better to finish 3rd in a group. But I like it better than 16x3 groups and there’ll be fewer dead rubbers

Good, now do the same for the next Women’s World Cup too. In fact it should be a joint tournament like the RLWC was, a few months ago. The RLWC had men, women and disabled athletes competing in one tournament.

The rest of the world wanted to be a part of it as well, but Europe wanted to hog its spots and would prefer a 48 team tournament instead.

I think this format ia good. Helps many countries who never been to the wc finals

personally, I'm not going to watch the group stage. I love football, but this amount of matches can make you sick

So we don’t have to start watching it until after the first stage then. I’m not watching games like Scotland vs Cyprus

Indonesia vs Uzbekistán is going to Be lit 😎

Group of 3 meant a team could Draw 0-0 and Lose 3-0 yet still qualify. That would be rubbish.

What will be the determining factor that decides which 3rd place teams are "the best eight out of the twelve" that qualify to advance out of the Group Stage?

I have best format for 48 teams …. 8 groups of 6 . 2 Euro teams per group. Top 3 of each group quality . 1st , 2nd , 3rd All 2nd will cross play a 3rd for a knock out . Winners will cross play a 1st qualifier to end up with a top 16. Top 16 play off as normal. Please comment what you think .

Will reduced the quality over all but as an ireland fan probably only way we are making a tournement.

48 teams = more matches = bigger broadcast/streaming deals = MORE MONEY !! It's really simple

Gary Lineker will be there in his Albania kit !!

Let the New Format cooks, if not okay we protest for the next WC.

2026 World Baseball Classic

More matches, more ad revenue, more profits. From a financial perspective I like the change. Buy shares of the companies that will profit from this change.

GREED pure and simple GREED!!!!!! Also for me i see it as a push in the direction of a euro super league top 4 or 6 from UK, france, germany, italy ,spain etc...

FIFA World Cup 48 Teams 2026 64 Teams 2042

Not a good thing when it’s gonna have 3rd places teams make the knockouts stages

Everyone wear bulletproof vests

Utterly pointless! If you finish 3rd in a group of 4, you don't deserve to still be in the tournament! They'd be better off leaving it as it is, or even going for 64 teams rather than this!

So they've added an extra knockout round...fair enough

Why is it that Europe has more slots in the FIFA World Cup than any other continent?

ONE DAY WAITING FOR INDIA🇮🇳

if we are going to have 48 nations there, why even BOTHER with qualifying ?

i like it, just more games

This is better. Moving in the right direction.

How are the "8 best 3rd place teams" determined?

Only European big countries are the ones against it for obvious reasons. But for other nations of the world, this new format depicts how a true FIFA world cup should be.

Its watering down the final stage of the World Cup competition. The argument that it embraces more countries and therefore it makes the World Cup more of a truly World competition is a utter nonsense. Every country can enter the competition, it is just that there are stages /points of elimination as it progresses. Qualification being one of those points. Some make it others do not.

Give each continent a fair share of spots

Could be kind of sick having another knockout round

World cup on my birthday 🎉🎉🎉

Matches 2026 104 To 120 2042 FIFA World Cup

At 3:18 the argument that by participating in a world cup their football will improve is very very weak. Like It's not like they get to battle every week anyway, it's once every 4 years.

I'll say it again. Just have a nation league would cup type of event.

I like this Idea, it means "small" football nations like my country Zimbabwe, will eventually qualify for The World Cup.......oh wait, we're still banned by FIFA!! Only if politicians will leave our football alone!

if its not broken dont fix it ,not fifa

Wait a minute, never mention more gate receipts, sponsors etcetra. 😊

I am a football fan, but I must admit I don't like this new format. I am quite content with the 32 team tournament. The world cup is something special and now it is becoming non special. I will still watch it, but I am not in support of this...