Imagining the 48-team 2026 World Cup
By Phil Naegely
FIFA unanimously agreed to expand the World Cup field to 48 teams starting in 2026, but what would a 48-team World Cup actually look like?
FIFA officials agreed to expand the World Cup field to 48 starting with the 2026 World Cup. The new format is expected to feature 16 groups of three teams, with the top two teams in each group advancing to the knockout round.
The change has been met with no shortage of anger, with most critics pointing to either FIFA’s continued, shameless pursuit of profit or a concern that the increase in teams will only dilute the quality of the competition.
But what might an actual 48-team tournament look like, and which lesser nation’s attempts at passable soccer will these critics be forced to witness?
The breakdown of the teams in the new format is as follows, per The Guardian: “16 European teams (13 currently), 9 African teams (5), 8.5 Asia teams (4.5), South America 6 (4.5), 6.5 CONCACAF teams (3.5), 1 Oceania team (.5), and the host nation.”
To get a sense of what that might look like in action, we went through FIFA’s world rankings and picked the 16 highest-ranked teams in Europe, the nine highest-ranked in Africa and so on. The 48 teams are as follows:
Europe (16)
Germany, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Wales, England, Croatia, Poland, Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Republic of Ireland, Turkey, Slovakia
Africa (9)
Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Congo DR, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ghana
Asia (8)
Iran, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, UAE, China
South America (6)
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Peru
CONCACAF (8)
USA, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Honduras, Curacao, Jamaica
Oceania (1)
New Zealand
CONCACAF gets eight spots because we’re going to assume, as has been rumored in several places, the USA is hosting and its eighth-highest ranked side (Jamaica) is above Asia’s ninth-highest ranked side (Qatar) in FIFA’s list. Those teams would theoretically face each other in a playoff, so we picked the higher ranked of the two.
Those are the teams, then. We divided them up into three pools according to their current FIFA rankings (not ideal, but then neither’s a 48-team World Cup) and randomly assigned one team from each pool to each group. The bracket below assumes that the higher ranking nation wins every game. That almost certainly won’t be the case in the actual World Cup, but given one of the criticisms of the new format is that some of the smaller nations are a waste of space, it at least gives a clear picture of what a tournament in which that’s completely true would look like. This, then, is a completely unscientific imagining of the 2026 USA World Cup, in all its 48-team glory.
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D |
| 1. Uruguay | 1. Spain | 1. Switzerland | 1. Wales |
| 2. Costa Rica | 2. Mexico | 2. USA | 2. Iran |
| 3. Jamaica | 3. Australia | 3. Congo | 3. Nigeria |
| Group E | Group F | Group G | Group H |
| 1. Argentina | 1. Brazil | 1. Germany | 1. Chile |
| 2. Senegal | 2. Tunisia | 2. Egypt | 2. Slovakia |
| 3. Burkina Faso | 3. New Zealand | 3. Panama | 3. Uzbekistan |
| Group I | Group J | Group K | Group L |
| 1. Belgium | 1. Colombia | 1. France | 1. Portugal |
| 2. Peru | 2. Iceland | 2. Netherlands | 2. Cote d’Ivoire |
| 3. UAE | 3. Haiti | 3. Honduras | 3. Curacao |
| Group M | Group N | Group O | Group P |
| 1. England | 1. Croatia | 1. Poland | 1. Italy |
| 2. Rep. of Ireland | 2. Turkey | 2. South Korea | 2. Algeria |
| 3. Japan | 3. China | 3. Ghana | 3. Saudi Arabia |
In the round of 32, the winners of Group A play the runners up of Group P, the winners of Group B play the runners up of Group O and so on.
Round of 32:
Uruguay beat Algeria
Spain beat South Korea
Switzerland beat Turkey
Wales beat Republic of Ireland
Argentina beat Cote d’Ivoire
Brazil beat Netherlands
Germany beat Iceland
Chile beat Peru
Belgium beat Slovakia
Colombia beat Egypt
France beat Tunisia
Portugal beat Senegal
England beat Iran
Croatia beat USA
Poland beat Mexico
Italy beat Costa Rica
Round of 16:
Chile beat Uruguay
Germany beat Spain
Brazil beat Switzerland
Argentina beat Wales
Belgium beat Italy
Colombia beat Poland
France beat Croatia
Portugal beat England
Quarterfinals:
Argentina beat Chile
Brazil beat Germany
Belgium beat Portugal
Colombia beat France
Semifinals:
Argentina beat Brazil
Belgium beat Colombia
Final:
Argentina beat Belgium
There you have it: Argentina are the 2026 World Cup champions. This is all of course based on a deeply flawed ranking system that will presumably have a completely different order almost a decade from now. But even so, it’s a fun thought experiment. Brazil get revenge against Germany for their humiliation in 2014, Portugal knock England out of a major tournament no matter what the format and the USMNT loses in the first knockout round to Croatia.
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At the other end of the spectrum, the likes of Curacao, New Zealand and Haiti fail to make a splash, going out at the group stage as critics of the new format fully expect them to. This is the World Cup we’re talking about, which means even a group stage match between Chile and Uzbekistan will have its charms, but looking at some of the lower-ranked teams here it’s hard to fully avoid the impression the new, expanded group stage will be little more than a sort of participation trophy for the lesser nations. But hey, participation trophies aren’t always bad.