Arya News - Follow along to see who has already punched their ticket to next summer`s tournament — and who is up next.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is rapidly approaching, and the expanded 48-team field is nearly complete. Forty-two nations have already clinched their place at next summer"s tournament in North America, leaving only the play-off tournaments to decide the final six spots.
This will be the first World Cup played with the new 48-team format, adding 16 additional slots from the 2022 edition with increased allocations across all six confederations: UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) receives 16 direct berths, CAF (Confederation of African Football) nine, AFC (Asian Football Confederation) eight, and both CONMEBOL (Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol) and CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) six each while OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) gets one guaranteed spot for the first time.
Six spots remain and they"ll be decided by playoffs — two through the intercontinental Play-off Tournament, which features two CONCACAF teams and one entrant each from AFC, CAF, CONMEBOL and OFC and four through a European Play-Off. Europe"s playoff will include 12 group runners-up plus the four best-ranked UEFA Nations League group winner that didn"t qualify directly. The playoff draw takes place Thursday, setting the brackets that will determine the final qualifiers.
Follow along as the 48-team field is determined ahead of next summer"s World Cup.
UEFA
UEFA gets the most spots of any of the confederations, with 16 teams able to punch their ticket to the tournament.
For the first round of the qualifying tournament, which wrapped up Tuesday, the winners of each of 12 groups automatically advanced to the World Cup. The four remaining spots will be determined by a play-off tournament with the 12 runner-ups, plus the four highest-ranked teams in the UEFA Nations League.
Qualified: England, France, Croatia, Norway, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Scotland, Spain and Switzerland
Qualified for European Play-off : Italy, Denmark, Türkiye, Ukraine, Poland, Wales, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ireland Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Romania, Sweden, North Macedonia and Northern Ireland
CONCACAF
As the three host countries, the U.S., Canada and Mexico all receive automatic qualifying bids for the 2026 World Cup. As a result, those three countries hold three of the confederation"s six qualifying spots, with CONCACAF also getting two spots in the playoff tournament.
Qualified: United States, Canada, Mexico, Curaçao, Haiti and Panama
Qualified for intercontinental play-off : Jamaica and Suriname
AFC
The Asian Football Confederation, the federation that covers Eurasia as well as Asia, determined its qualifiers with a multi-round tournament in 2025 that continued into the fall.
Japan became the first non-host team to secure a spot back in March, followed by the rest of the field. Only one play-in spot remains, with countries like Indonesia, UAE, Iraq, Oman and China still in the running.
Qualified: Australia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan
Qualified for intercontinental play-off : Iraq
CAF
An ongoing tournament whittled the CAF down from 53 nations to the nine qualifiers, with one play-off spot still to be determined. Morocco, after surging to a semifinals appearance in 2022, is back at the top of the conversation heading into 2026. As the CAF tournament reached an end point this fall, Morocco became the first African team to qualify in September, followed by Tunisia.
Qualified: Algeria, Cabo Verde, Côte d"Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia
Qualified for intercontinental play-off : Congo DR
CONMEBOL
Of all of the qualifying formats, CONMEBOL"s is the simplest: The confederation"s 10 teams competed in a league table, with the top six teams qualifying for the World Cup, and the seventh — Bolivia, in this case — representing CONMEBOL in the play-off tournament.
Argentina, the defending champions , were rolling early in the process, qualifying for 2026 all the way back in March. The rest of the field filled out by September.
Qualified: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay
Qualified for intercontinental play-off : Bolivia
OFC
The expanded format means that Oceania will get a guaranteed spot for the first time ever. It"s not much of a surprise that New Zealand — by far the largest country in the confederation — will be OFC"s representative at the World Cup, but it will be an exciting time for the country. New Zealand has qualified for the World Cup just two other times, even in the years since Australia left OFC to join AFC. New Caledonia, meanwhile, will join the play-off tournament, though a win there would be a significant upset, given that the nation sits at 150 in FIFA"s rankings , well below all of its competitors.
Qualified: New Zealand
Qualified for intercontinental play-off : New Caledonia