World Cup 2026 – An Introduction

This month the biggest World Cup in history will begin. It is hosted mainly by the USA, but Canada and Mexico are also hosting. This means that the USA, Canada and Mexico have all automatically qualified as co-hosts for the 2026 World Cup.

It is the biggest World Cup so far as the amount of national teams has increased from 32 teams last time around in Qatar 2022 to 48 teams for this edition of the World Cup. The 48 teams have been placed into 12 groups of 4 teams. Each team will play three games against all the other teams in their group. The top two teams from each group will qualify for the next round, along with the 8 best third placed teams out of the 12 groups.

The 2nd round onwards will be a straight knock-out competition with 32 teams in the 2nd round. Then 16 teams in the 3rd round, quarter-finals with 8 teams, semi-finals with 4 teams and the World Cup Final with the final two teams.

The kick-off times are rather different than in previous World Cup editions, this is because of the time zones in North America. These vary from five hours behind to eight hours behind (BST) British Summer Time. After the first two days when there are only two games, there are four games per day/evening/night. Because of the time differences, evening matches in the World Cup will take place throughout the night here and into the early morning of the next day. The various nature of the kick-offs this time means that the kick-off times vary from day to day. In previous tournaments the kick-off times have been set to the same times each day.

Because this World Cup has 16 more teams and 4 more groups, it means that the tournament is a week longer than usual and there are more games to be played. The first game is being played on Thursday 11th June and the World Cup final is being played on Sunday 19th July.

Ian Newson Plested