For the 2026 World Cup, some countries played six qualifiers but some played eight. Now all will play six.<\/p>\n
Every team in the 12-team group will play six home-or-away matches against six different opponents – two per pot.<\/p>\n
It moves qualifying away from the regular format where teams would play all opponents in their group home and away.<\/p>\n
The best-ranked teams of each group of League 1 will qualify for the World Cup, with the remaining places allocated via play-offs.<\/p>\n
Uefa has not confirmed the breakdown of the automatic slots.<\/p>\n
The remaining 18, lower-ranked countries – under the current format, effectively all but the group winners in Nations League C and all seven countries in Nations League D – will take part in League 2.<\/p>\n
Countries in League 2 would still have opportunities to qualify.<\/p>\n
Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said: “The new formats will improve competitive balance, reduce the number of dead matches, offer a more appealing and dynamic competition to fans, while ensuring a fair qualification chance for all teams and without adding any additional dates in the international calendar.”<\/p>\n
Uefa also announced that the Nations League would be restructured from 2028, into three divisions of 18 teams – each with three groups of six teams.<\/p>\n
Teams will still play six matches, but against five different opponents.<\/p>\n
There will be three pots of six teams.<\/p>\n
For example, a team in pot one would play another team from pot one home and away, plus two teams each from pots two and three home or away.<\/p>\n
Semi-finals, finals, promotion and relegation will continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the 2026 World Cup, some countries played six qualifiers but some played eight. Now all will play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-458647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}