Africa teams await their World Cup fate

by Staff Reporter

Thursday Dec 04, 2025. 16:49

The African participants in the 2026 FIFA World Cup will discover their opponents on Friday as the draw is set to take place in Washington D.C.

The World Cup draw will be conducted at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., and will begin at 7pm CAT (5pm GMT and 12pm local time in Washington).

The tournament will be held in the United States of America, Mexico and Canada from 11 June to 18 July and will be the biggest edition of the global showpiece to date.

The 2026 edition will have 48 teams, an increase of 16 teams from the previous tournaments which had 32 teams.

Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, Egypt, Senegal and South Africa are the confirmed participants from the continent, having each finished first in their groups in African qualifying.

The tournament will feature 12 groups, each containing four teams, with one team from each of the four pots for the draw making up each group.

No group may contain more than one team from the same continental confederation aside from Europe’s UEFA, which will have at least one of its member associations in each group but no more than two.

Therefore, there will only be one African team in each group.

The placement of the participating teams into their respective pots was based on the FIFA rankings.

Pot one, which contains the best-ranked nations to have qualified for the tournament and the three hosts, is comprised of Canada, Mexico, USA, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, containing no African nations.

Morocco and Senegal are in top two with Croatia, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Iran, South Korea, Ecuador, Austria and Australia.

South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Ivory Coast are all in pot three alongside Norway, Panama, Scotland, Paraguay, Uzbekistan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

Cape Verde and Ghana are the African representatives in pot four along with Jordan, Curaçao, Haiti, New Zealand and the remaining play-off winners, who are yet to be decided.

Through the play-offs, four spots remain for the winners of the European Play-Off while two spots are open for the intercontinental FIFA Play-Off Tournament winners.

The intercontinental play-off winners will be decided in March, with New Caledonia facing Jamaica and Bolivia facing Suriname. The victor between New Caledonia and Jamaica will meet the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while the winner between Bolivia and Suriname will play against Iraq. The winners of these two games will join the global showpiece.

Should DR Congo qualify, the central African nation will not be placed in a group with any other teams from the same confederation (CAF).

In the European play-offs, eight fixtures will be played with the four winners qualifying for the tournament. Wales face Bosnia, Italy face Northern Ireland, Ukraine face Sweden, Poland face Albania, Slovakia tackle Kosovo, Turkey tackle Romania, Czech Republic play against Ireland, and Denmark is up against North Macedonia.

The draw is sure to produce thrilling match-ups as the countdown to the biggest edition of the world’s biggest tournament begins.

By Nic Gleeson