{"id":273650,"date":"2025-11-20T13:57:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T13:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273650\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T13:57:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T13:57:06","slug":"world-cup-2026-play-offs-draw-wales-republic-of-ireland-and-northern-ireland-discover-opponents-football-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273650\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026 play-offs draw: Wales, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland discover opponents | Football News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wales will host Bosnia and Herzegovina in a one-legged World Cup play-off semi-final and could face either Italy or Northern Ireland at home in the final.<\/p>\n<p>Craig Bellamy&#8217;s side secured their place by finishing second behind Belgium in qualifying Group J and will be the home team for the one-off match and in the final should they get there.<\/p>\n<p>Northern Ireland, who qualified through the Nations League, have been handed the difficult task of travelling to Italy for their play-off semi-final.<\/p>\n<p>The Republic of Ireland, who booked their spot in dramatic fashion thanks to a last-gasp victory over Hungary, will play away in the Czech Republic in their semi-final.<\/p>\n<p>The winner of that match will host either Denmark or North Macedonia.<\/p>\n<p>The semi-finals will take place on Thursday March 26 and the finals on Tuesday March 31 with kick-off times of 5pm or 7.45pm.<\/p>\n<p>The winners of the four play-off finals qualify for the World Cup and complete the field of 16 European participants.<\/p>\n<p>World Cup play-off draw:<\/p>\n<p>Play-off Path A:<br \/>Semi-final: Italy vs Northern Ireland<br \/>Semi-final: Wales vs Bosnia and Herzegovina<br \/>Final: Wales\/Bosnia and Herzegovina vs Italy\/Northern Ireland<\/p>\n<p>Play-off Path B:<br \/>Semi-final: Ukraine vs Sweden<br \/>Semi-final: Poland vs Albania<br \/>Final: Ukraine\/Sweden vs Poland\/Albania<\/p>\n<p>Play-off Path C:<br \/>Semi-final: Turkey vs Romania<br \/>Semi-final: Slovakia vs Kosovo<br \/>Final: Slovakia\/Kosovo vs Turkey\/Romania<\/p>\n<p>Play-off Path D:<br \/>Semi-final: Denmark vs North Macedonia<br \/>Semi-final: Czech Republic vs Republic of Ireland<br \/>Final: Czech Republic\/Republic of Ireland vs Denmark\/North Macedonia<\/p>\n<p>The draw was also made for the inter-confederation play-offs, from which the final two teams for the 48-strong finals will come.<\/p>\n<p>Jamaica, who missed out on automatic qualifying to Curacao, will take on New Caledonia, with the winner facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the final.<\/p>\n<p>Bolivia and Suriname, meanwhile, will clash for the right to face Iraq.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skysports.com\/football\/news\/11065\/13427475\/world-cup-2026-who-has-qualified-and-when-is-the-draw-full-list-of-teams-for-usa-canada-and-mexico\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Who has qualified already for World Cup?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Forty-two teams have qualified for the 2026 World Cup so far, with a list below:<\/p>\n<p>        Datawrapper<\/p>\n<p>                This content is provided by Datawrapper, which may be using cookies and other technologies.<br \/>\n                To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.<br \/>\n                You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Datawrapper cookies or to allow those cookies just once.<br \/>\n                You can change your settings at any time via the <a href=\"#privacy-options\">Privacy Options<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>                Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Datawrapper cookies.<br \/>\n                To view this content you can use the button below to allow Datawrapper cookies for this session only.<\/p>\n<p>                <a href=\"#\" class=\"ui-consent-roadblock-body__link ui-consent-roadblock-permanently\" 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Italy&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-273650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}