Key events
David Hytner hopes the draw will be football-related. Let's hope so too.
It may seem trite when players and coaches talk about fulfilling childhood dreams at the World Cup. But the emotions during qualifying were real. For example, the scenes when Scotland secured their first place in the final after France '98 with the team epic victory at Hampden Park over Denmark will live forever. How about when Cape Verde achieved this with a home win over Eswatini? Africa had five seats for Qatar-22. Now they have a guaranteed nine. It will be 10 if the Democratic Republic of the Congo wins the play-off final against New Caledonia or Jamaica.
Here are the pots.
According to a FIFA press release, here's what we can expect from Razzmataz.
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Global stars Heidi Klum and Kevin Hart will host the final draw show at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
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Actor and producer Danny Ramirez will invite great football players to the event, bringing a Hollywood flavor
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Live performances will include legendary maestro Andrea Bocelli, Village People and global music superstar Robbie Williams, joined by award-winning Nicole Scherzinger.
Lunchtime Listening: Jonathan Liu on the political undertones of next summer.
The technical details are here, as selected by Tom Lutz.
And how does the draw actually happen?
The 48 teams were divided into four pots of 12 teams each. Pot 1 includes the three hosts – the United States, Mexico and Canada – as well as the top nine teams. in the current FIFA rankings. The next three pots were determined according to FIFA rankings, with the lowest ranked teams going into pot 4. The 12 World Cup groups would then be drawn with one team from each pot (full pots to be revealed later).
Sounds simple!
Well, not really. At the end of March, six qualifying places were still to be determined for the playoffs, and the teams participating in these matches were placed in pot four. This means that a team like Italy will be ostensibly the weakest opponent in the group, even though they have won the World Cup four times and are ranked 12th in the world, if they make it through the European qualifying knockout rounds. In theory, teams from the same qualifying conference should not be in the same group. But this is not possible for European teams as UEFA will have 16 teams in the draw. However, there will be a maximum of two European teams in each group. In addition, the top four teams in the FIFA rankings – Spain, Argentina, France and England – can't look at each other to the semi-finals (of course they need to get there first), provided they win their groups.
Preamble
Welcome to our live broadcast of the giveaway World Cup 2026 final. The USA, Canada and Mexico beckon to you, and perhaps so do your travel plans. With 48 teams in the draw, there will be plenty to talk about, not least because all the finalists have yet to be decided. We expect glitz and glamour, and that's just from Rio Ferdinand and Gianni Infantino, so join us as we bring the latest from Washington. The city's most famous half-resident will no doubt make his usual splash.
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