What will the new 48-team World Cup look like?
The 2026 World Cup will be a 48-team affair. FIFA has decided to expand their ultimate tournament and its their biggest expansion ever with 16 teams being added to the field.
What will a 48-team World Cup look like, though? FIFA hasn't exactly decided yet. There will be 16 groups of three with the top two advancing to the knockout stages, but they've yet to lay out how they'll allocate the 48 spots to begin with. We can do a decent job guessing, though, using the current allocations to confederations and various reports, as well as quotes from FIFA officials.
For starters, let's take a look at the current allocations for a 32-team World Cup:
That is on top of the one spot that automatically goes to the tournament host.
The half spots mean that a team goes into an inter-confederation playoff. That's a home-and-home two-leg aggregate tie to determine a winner. So CONCACAF's fourth team will play Asia's fifth team and South America's fifth team will play Oceania's top team.
Looking ahead to 2026, when the tournament expands, this is the best idea we have of what the allocation of World Cup places will look like:
Finally, the host will still automatically advance. Europe has been demanding they get at least 16 teams in an expanded World Cup and it's unlikely they don't get it. Africa, Asia and CONCACAF are all getting huge increases, but that is consistent with the aim of the expanded tournament -- to get more teams who usually aren't involved in the World Cup to the event and expand its reach. That it is politically advantageous, placating confederations with a lot of countries and votes in FIFA elections, doesn't hurt either.
Now, obviously this format won't be used until 2026 and a lot can change before then, but say this plan was put into action today, this is what the World Cup would look like based on the FIFA rankings:
Africa
Senegal, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Congo DR, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Ghana
Asia
Iran, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates, China and Qatar (playoff)
CONCACAF
Costa Rica, Mexico, United States, Panama, Haiti, Honduras and Curacao (playoff)
Europe
Germany, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Wales, England, Croatia, Poland, Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Ireland, Turkey and Slovakia
Oceania
New Zealand
South America
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay and Peru
Of course, the FIFA rankings are imperfect and qualifying formats mean that the best teams can't all get in. Then there are upsets too. We're also looking nine years into the future so this will definitely not be the 2026 World Cup, but it gives you an idea as to the size, scope and potential quality of it.
The 48-team World Cup is coming. And it will be huge.
