The European national teams will discover their qualifying opponents for the 2026 World Cup in today’s (Friday) draw, which will be held at 12:00 in Zurich, Switzerland.
A total of 16 UEFA teams will qualify for the expanded 48-team tournament to be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
But how does the draw work – and who might the home nations face?
How do World Cup qualifications work?
The format for European qualifiers has changed, with more groups – and smaller ones – than before.
There will be 12 qualifying groups for the World Cup. Six groups will have four teams and six other groups will have five teams each.
The teams will play each other home and away as usual.
The top team from each group automatically qualifies for the World Cup, with the runners-up going into a four-team Nations League play-off.
Four of the 16 play-off teams will qualify for the 2026 World Cup.
How will the groups be divided?
All groups will contain one team from each of pots one to four. Six of the groups will also have one team from pot five. There are some restrictions on which teams can be drawn into which groups and who they can face – more on that below.
Teams will be drawn in pot order – so first the teams from pot one, then the teams from pot two and so on.
Pot 1 : Spain, Germany, Portugal, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria
Pot 2 : Ukraine, Sweden, Turkey, Wales, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Norway
Pot 3 : Scotland, Slovenia, Republic of Ireland, Albania , North Macedonia, Georgia, Finland, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel
Pot 4 : Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Kosovo , Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Latvia, Lithuania
Pot 5 : Moldova, Malta, Andorra, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, San Marino.