World Cup
2026 World
Cup Draw
live
Updated
The draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup will take place today in Washington, D.C., at midday ET.
President Donald Trump will be present at the Kennedy Center as 12 groups of four teams are formed ahead of next summer in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
We will be joined throughout the day by a team of journalists based in each of the participating nations — and you can get in touch by emailing live@theathletic.com.
There will be 104 matches at next summer’s edition of the World Cup.
There were 18 at the first tournament in 1930, a figure that will have been surpassed on just the sixth day of the 2026 competition.
For context, the tournament next year will last for 39 days.
The graphic shows how the volume of games has changed at the World Cup from 1930 to 2022.
Here at The Athletic, we love our quirky facts.
So I have come up with an eclectic mix of stats and trivia about each of the 64 teams in the draw.
You can enjoy the piece with the link below.
GO FURTHER
Did you know? A quirky fact about all 64 teams in the World Cup draw
This has come out of the blue. The U.S.A. has decided that now is the time to reveal its official soccer mascot — and you can catch a first glimpse below.
Yes, it’s a dog! But not just any dog. It’s a dog “inspired by the Chesapeake Bay Retriever known for its bright and happy disposition, courage, willingness to work, and intelligence.”
Sounds like the unicorn of dogs to me.
Anyway, said mascot is going to wear the number 27 to represent the total number of U.S. Soccer’s national teams and I’m sure it will be a success.
But there is one thing missing. A name! That’s right, U.S. Soccer is also running a competition to name its new football pooch. And yes, I’ve asked some of my colleagues to come up with their own suggestions.
If you’re lucky, I’ll make sure they get an airing in here shortly. We would love to hear your thoughts and name suggestions too — just pop them in an email to live@theathletic.com
And for those of you who prefer to digest all your draw information — pots and all — in video form, here is the excellent Eduardo Tansley to help you do just that …
I owe you an apology. Earlier I posted in this feed that the four pots split was designed to make the 12 World Cup groups “about as strong or weak as each other” — and of course, this is nonsense.
I can guarantee we will have at least one walkover group (as it will look on paper before we all go to bed, anyway) and a prime candidate for the ‘group of death’, where somehow you end up with four strong teams meeting in the group stages.
Admittedly, that idea does feel harder to achieve when the finals have been expanded like this — but the great news is you can play with that theory yourself using our World Cup draw simulator, which you can access here.
It has all sorts of fun visualizations, like the one above. You just need to make sure you keep this feed open too. We don’t want you missing the actual draw!
Avoiding much of what Sepp Blatter did at FIFA has always been used as a pretty good rule of thumb for his successor, Gianni Infantino, to follow.
The corruption overseen by the Swiss former president earned him — along with UEFA president Michael Platini — an eight-year ban from football, which was later reduced to six on appeal.
Whether Infantino has done a good job of steering clear of similar traps is a discussion for another day.
What the current FIFA president will certainly want to avoid is a repeat of the 1994 draw, when Blatter was the target of Robin Williams’ jokes.
The Mrs Doubtfire and Good Will Hunting star poked fun at Blatter throughout his performance, leading to very awkward laughter from the man in charge.
I’m sure Kevin Hart has had his warning …
Just hours before President Donald Trump and FIFA president Gianni Infantino announced the location of the World Cup draw, the MGM Resorts group in Las Vegas received a courtesy correspondence from FIFA.
It was a short and generic email. It said, essentially: Thank you, but no thank you.
The expectation of many involved in next summer’s World Cup plans had been that the competition’s draw would take place in Las Vegas. There had, however, always been a but that never went away.
That but, first reported by The Athletic in April, was that Washington, D.C. — and, more precisely, Infantino — wanted to ensure it would be easy for Trump to participate in the draw, if he wished.
That suspicion finally crystallized when, in a remarkable news conference in the Oval Office, Trump announced the draw today would take place at the Kennedy Center.
According to sources familiar with the discussions, who wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships, the venue was suggested by Trump’s administration and Infantino fell into line, despite numerous FIFA officials preferring Las Vegas.
Since returning for a second term in January, President Trump has attended the Super Bowl, UFC fights, the Daytona 500, the NCAA Wrestling Championships, the FIFA Club World Cup, the U.S. Open men’s tennis final and the Ryder Cup.
Trump’s appearances at sports events have developed a pattern: anxiety and disruption for security services and event organizers, pomp and pageantry when he shows up, a divided reception from supporters and – most memorably during the Club World Cup final – a central role in celebrations.
As for an appearance next summer — Trump has set up a World Cup task force, which he chairs, and has held news briefings in the Oval Office with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, with both the Club World Cup and World Cup trophies appearing in his office at different times.
‘Pot’ is the word of the day every time the World Cup draw rolls around. It isn’t very often it gets capitalized either!
Our snazzy graphic above reminds you of which teams are in the four pots.
Bored of hearing about pots already?
Yeah, me too …
The logistics to get into the Kennedy Center today are difficult, to say the least.
With President Trump in attendance, security is high.
Streets are shutdown all around the venue — I hopped out of my Uber a little more than a quarter mile away to walk the rest — and then stood in the snow for an hour and 15 minutes to get through the security line.
We know this World Cup is going to be a 48-team tournament. But we only know 42 of the countries involved.
March will see a 16-team play-off in Europe to decide UEFA’s final four qualifiers, as well as a separate confederation playoff over the same dates to knock six more countries down to the final two remaining slots.
That is why there are some gaps in Pot 4 — and why there will still be some degree of unknown, even after today’s draw.
Especially with the likes of four-time winners Italy involved in that European playoff.
Key details here. The three host countries already know which group they will be in.
With the first game of the 2026 World Cup taking place at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on June 11, Mexico have automatically been assigned to Group A.
Canada will play the second match in Toronto, so they are in Group B.
The U.S.A. are playing the third match in Los Angeles and will be in Group D. Those will be the only two games on June 12.
We also know that Spain — the highest-ranked team — and second seeds Argentina will be on opposite sides of the draw.
It means the European champions and defending world champions cannot meet until the final, providing they both win their group.
That will also be the case for the team ranked third, France, and England as fourth seeds.
It might be worth taking some notes at this point, but I’ll try to make things as simple as possible.
All 48 spots in the World Cup draw are seeded, and then split into four groups — or pots — in a bid to make the 12 groups about as strong or weak as each other.
The three host countries join the highest-ranked FIFA teams in Pot 1, with the next highest seeds in Pot 2, through Pot 3 and down to Pot 4.
Each group will have a team from each pot and only one country from each confederation (region of the world).
The exception here is that because there will be 16 European teams in the finals, four groups will have two UEFA representatives.
Ah yes, first of all let’s get our heads around what the World Cup will actually look like next summer.
After 24 years of the world’s top 32 nations making it through, 2026 will mark the first 48-team tournament.
Yes indeed, that is a LOT of teams.
It means 12 groups of four, and 32 countries making it into the knockout stage. That will start with the round of 32, made up of the top two from each group and then the eight-best third-place finishers.
So, for the first time in World Cup history we’ve got:
I know what you’re thinking … how on earth is this all going to work?
Great question. And we’ve got the answer too. It’s going to come in bitesize chunks, and those are on the way next.
Good morning from a bitterly cold East Rutherford, N.J., where I just hopped on a Manhattan-bound bus to go cover the World Cup draw live from Times Square.
I’ll be there alongside local organizers and a few USMNT stars.
When I say it’s cold here today, I mean can’t-feel-my-face kind of cold. I had to break out my old winter gear from my college playing days for this!
In June, many will be doing the reverse of this commute to (hopefully) catch one of the eight World Cup matches being staged at MetLife Stadium.
Soon, we’ll finally know which teams will be playing there — at least for the group stage.
This will be the 23rd men’s World Cup and the first hosted by more than two countries.
So far there have been 964 games in the finals of the tournament and 2,720 goals scored. Brazil has contested the most matches (114) and scored the most goals (237) of any team.
As for the players, a certain Lionel Messi of Argentina has appeared in the most games with 26 and Germany’s Miroslav Klose has scored the most goals with 16, at least as things stand now.
Messi has 13 goals himself, and he is set to play next summer.
Hello again from Washington D.C. — or maybe that should be I.C. After all, we’ve already seen some light flurries of snow across the region today. It’s also frigid.
We’re not expecting any of that to affect the World Cup draw, of course. But it could still impact traffic and shuttles getting to the Kennedy Center.
Media were instructed earlier to arrive before 10:15 a.m. ET — and that is for an event that doesn’t start until 12 p.m.
There is also extensive security around the venue, given the expected attendance of U.S. President Donald Trump and other dignitaries, including the heads of government of Canada (Mark Carney) and Mexico (Claudia Sheinbaum).
But the one thing I’m really looking forward to tonight, is getting the inside takes, anecdotes and color from our writers and correspondents who will be taking into today’s events first-hand — and sharing it all with us here.
They’re starting to get settled in already too, although that might be because it’s already below freezing in Washington D.C. and I imagine they’ll be a little warmer inside the Kennedy Center!