At the moment, 28 national teams are known to have qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a competition hosted by three countries, the USA, Canada and Mexico.
Harry Kane’s England are the only country in Europe to qualify for the final tournament
The first teams to secure their tickets to the final tournament were the three co-host countries: Canada, Mexico and the United States of America. New Zealand and Japan were the next to obtain the right to participate in the ultimate competition, which in Romania will be broadcast by Antena 1. The 2026 World Championship is scheduled for June 11 – July 19. It will be the first tournament with 48 teams at the start. The groups for the World Cup will be decided by a draw in early December, but FIFA has yet to announce the exact date and venue of the ceremony.
Romania lives with hope
Romania is still far from fulfilling the dream: returning to the World Cup after 28 years, although the competition will contain, for the first time, 48 participants. The team led by Mircea Lucescu (80 years old) is, with two stages left to play, in 3rd place in Group H of the European preliminaries, with 10 points. He still has to face Bosnia, away (Zenica, November 15), and San Marino, at home (in Ploiești, November 18). Automatic qualification is brought by the first place in the group (occupied by Austria – 15 points), and the second position sends to the play-off (Bosnia – 12 points). Another route for the tricolors is that of the group winners in the Nations League. UEFA sends 16 of the 48 combatants. For now, from the Old Continent, only England is qualified. Portugal was close, but the Hungarians spoiled their party in extra time (2-2). Other selectees are close to qualifying. For example, Norway is about to send Italy to the dam.
CR7, the “king” of the preliminaries
Cristiano Ronaldo has broken another record, at the age of 40: he is the top scorer in the World Cup qualifiers. Against Hungary on Tuesday night, CR7 scored twice and has 948 career goals. He continues to rewrite football history, this time in World Cup qualifiers. Against Hungary, Portugal’s captain scored an absolute record-setting brace. No one scored more than him in WC qualifiers. Those two goals seemed to ensure direct qualification for the Lusitanian side, but Hungarian Szoboszlai’s goal, which brought the score to 2-2, put the party on hold. The two goals took his qualifying tally to 41 in 50 qualifying matches, overtaking former Guatemala striker Carlos Ruiz, who remained on 39 goals.
143 goals for the national team
With his goals in recent matches, Ronaldo has increased his tally for the national team to 143, surpassing his own record. No one in the history of football has scored so many goals for his country: Lionel Messi, second in this special ranking, has 114 for Argentina. In November 2024, thanks to the Nations League victory against Poland, Ronaldo also won the title of the player with the most international victories, surpassing Sergio Ramos. That’s not all! CR7 was the first player to participate in six European Championships and surpass 200 caps for the national team, an absolute record in the history of international football. Then, with his penalty kick against Ghana at the final tournament in Qatar 2022, Ronaldo became the first player to score at five different World Cups.
“Oli” doesn’t give up
After missing the direct qualification, following the failure on Tuesday night with Qatar (1-2), the United Arab Emirates national team, prepared by the Romanian Cosmin Olăroiu (56 years old), will play with Iraq for a place in the decisive play-off for qualifying for the World Championship in 2026. Iraq finished Group B in second place, after the “white” draw obtained in the away match with Arabia Saudi, who succeeded in direct qualification. The first match will be played in the United Arab Emirates on November 13, and the second leg will take place in Iraq on November 18. The Emirates national team needed at least a draw to ensure their presence at the World Championship, but Qatar managed to prevail, at the end of an incendiary match. Thus, the team led by Cosmin Olăroiu finished Group A in 2nd place and qualified for the Asian play-off for the 2026 World Championship. Six teams will participate in the play-offs in March.
How the places are distributed at the 2026 World Championship
Canada, Mexico and United States of America (host countries)
16 places for UEFA
9 seats for the African zone
8 seats for the Asian area
3 seats for Central America
a place for Oceania
6 seats for South America
2 places in the intercontinental play-offs
Countries qualified to the final round of 48 so far
Organizing countries: Canada, Mexico, USA
Asia: Australia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan
Africa: Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia
South America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay
Oceania: New Zealand
Europe: England
Trump is considering changing cities
US President Donald Trump, who has threatened Democratic municipalities with the deprivation of sports competitions, said on Tuesday that FIFA President Gianni Infantino will move matches from the 2026 World Cup if he asks him to. “If someone is doing a wrong job and I think there is a security problem, I will call Gianni, the head of FIFA, who is formidable, and say move them to another place. And he will do it,” the American president said to reporters present at a meeting with his Argentinian counterpart Javier Milei in Washington, according to AFP. Donald Trump added that “he will do it very easily”, referring to the president of the International Football Federation, whom he considers a friend and whom he has received several times at the White House since his return to power. The US president was specifically questioned about the Boston case. Trump and Infantino met in Egypt on Monday, where the FIFA president joined world leaders to discuss the Gaza peace process. Last week, the organizers of a friendly football match between Lionel Messi’s Argentina and Puerto Rico moved it from Chicago, where it was originally planned, to Florida. Among major Democratic cities, Boston must host seven World Cup matches in 2026, San Francisco and Seattle six, and Los Angeles eight.
Deep crisis among the Bulgarians
There are some nationalities with tradition from the “Old Continent” that are struggling in crisis. Sweden, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria are three of the needy. After a 0-1 draw with Kosovo, Sweden sacked Danish coach Jon Dahl Tomasson, and the Czech Republic sacked coach Ivan Hašek after a 1-2 draw with the Faroe Islands. The neighbors south of the Danube are going through a disastrous period. Semi-finalists of the World Cup in 1994, the representative of the neighboring country has not gone to a final tournament since 1998, just like Romania, and is in a precipice from a football point of view. After being humiliated by Turkey at home, 1-6, Bulgaria lost without appeal, “only” 0-4 in Spain, in the WC preliminaries. After 4 games, the national team trained by Aleksandar Dimitrov has 0 points in Group E, a 1-16 goal difference and no chance to reach the competition in the USA, Canada and Mexico. Unlike Romania, which, even if it won’t take 2nd place in the preliminaries, will go to the playoffs due to its progress in the League of Nations. Since November 2024, since the victory against Luxembourg, 1-0, Bulgaria has not known the taste of success, regardless of whether it was official or friendly matches (7 failures and two draws). Moreover, in the last 3 years he has only won 4, with Cyprus, Tanzania, Northern Ireland and Luxembourg. Ranked 8th in the FIFA rankings in 1995, Bulgaria came close to the lowest position in history (96). After the disputes in October, it will drop from 86 to 91. At the pole is a team from Africa, Morocco, which impresses with a series of 16 victories in a row.
Money for Steel and FCSB
FIFA will award large sums of money to clubs that send their players to the World Cup. So far, only two footballers from the Super League have managed to qualify with their national teams for next year’s final tournament: Joao Paulo, from the big surprise Cape Verde, and Siyabonga Ngezana, the player of South Africa. The international forum will distribute the record amount of 355 million dollars to clubs around the world, compared to 209 million dollars, what it paid in 2022, in the edition in Qatar. Among it are, for now, Oțelul and FCSB, of course, if the two will catch the batches of 26 summoned players. FIFA will award $10,000 for each day the players are present at the final tournament, with the money to be shared by the club they belong to, but also by the teams they played for in the last two years. A footballer called up to a national team qualified for the 2026 World Cup is guaranteed a minimum of 22 days spent on American soil (7 training days, 14 in which the group games will be played and one after a possible elimination in the group phase). The minimum amount that FIFA will grant for the soccer player from Cape Verde will therefore be 220,000 dollars, money that will be shared by Oțelul with Sheriff Tiraspol, the team from which the soccer player was bought in July of this year. In the case of FCSB, things are simpler. As Nghezana has been playing for the champion team since 2023, the red-blues will collect the full amount, not having to share it with anyone.
