FIFA reveals World Cup draw seedings; top four to be kept apart before semifinal

Michelle Kaufman, Miami Herald on Nov 25, 2025

Published in Soccer

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MIAMI — The highly anticipated World Cup draw is coming up on Dec. 5, and soccer fans the world over will tune in as the 48 qualified teams will be allocated into groups for the 2026 tournament, which is being held in the United States, Mexico and Canada next summer.

The draw ceremony will be at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. at noon. The next day, on Dec. 6, the full match schedule, including the stadium assigned to each match and the respective kick-off time, will be confirmed.

Procedures for the draw stipulate that the three hosts will be allocated to Pot 1, and the 39 remaining qualified teams will be allocated to the four 12-team pots according to the FIFA World Ranking issued on Nov. 19.

The two World Cup 2026 playoff tournament placeholders, as well as the four European playoff placeholders, will be allocated to Pot 4.

Here is the list of pots heading into the draw:

Pot 1: Canada, Mexico, USA, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany

Pot 2: Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, Iran, South Korea, Ecuador, Austria, Australia

Pot 3: Norway, Panama, Egypt, Algeria, Scotland, Paraguay, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa

Pot 4: Jordan, Cape Verde, Ghana, Curaçao, Haiti, New Zealand, European playoff A, B, C and D, FIFA playoff tournament 1 and 2

The draw will begin with all the teams from Pot 1 being drawn to groups A to L. It will then continue with Pots 2, 3 and 4 in that order.

For Pot 1, Canada, Mexico and the USA, as the host countries, will be identified by different colored balls and, when drawn, will be assigned to position A1 for Mexico (green ball), B1 for Canada (red ball) and D1 for the USA (blue ball).

The remaining nine top-ranked teams in Pot 1 will be identified by nine balls of the same color and placed to position 1 of the group into which they are drawn.

To ensure competitive balance, two separate pathways to the semifinals have been established when developing the match schedule.

To have a balanced distribution of the teams, the four highest-ranked teams, when drawn, will have the following constraints: the highest-ranked team (Spain) and the second highest-ranked team (Argentina) will be randomly drawn into opposite pathways, and the same principle will apply to the third (France) and fourth (England) highest-ranked teams. This will ensure that, should they win their groups, the two highest-ranked teams will not meet before the final.

No group will have more than one team from the same confederation drawn into it. This applies to all confederations except UEFA, which is represented by 16 teams. Each group must have at least one, but no more than two UEFA teams drawn into it.

Fox will air three and a half hours of live coverage of the draw. The coverage kicks off with a live pre-show at 11:30 a.m. The draw itself will take place from noon to 2 p.m., followed by analysis, reactions, and interviews until 3 p.m.