ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 The final six places for the 2026 World Cup will be determined by two playoff tournaments in March.<\/p>\n
Four more teams will qualify from Europe, along with two from the rest of the world.<\/p>\n
The UEFA playoffs will consist of 16 nations, while FIFA’s intercontinental playoffs feature six.<\/p>\n
The successful teams will join the 42 other nations to have qualified for the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which runs through June and July.<\/p>\n
Here’s what to know about the playoffs.<\/p>\n
European playoffs<\/p>\n
Twelve runners up from the European qualifying groups advanced to the playoffs. Four more teams advanced as the highest-ranked group winners from the UEFA Nations League which did not place in the top two of their European qualifying group.<\/p>\n
Group runners-up: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Kosovo, Poland, Ireland, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, Wales.<\/p>\n
Nations League group winners: Romania, Sweden, Northern Ireland, North Macedonia.<\/p>\n
Teams will be placed in a seeded draw from four pots, based on the FIFA ranking position of the 12 runners-up. The top eight teams will be seeded. The bottom four, along with the Nations League qualifiers will be unseeded.<\/p>\n
The four top-seeded teams in Pot 1 will be guaranteed semifinals against the Nations League qualifiers. There will be eight semifinals in total, with seeded teams drawn at home.<\/p>\n
Seeded teams: (Pot 1) Italy, Denmark, Turkey, Ukraine; (Pot 2) Poland, Wales, Czech Republic, Slovakia.<\/p>\n
The winners of the semifinals advance to four finals to determine the teams that qualify for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
The semifinals will be played Mar. 26 and the finals will be Mar. 31.<\/p>\n
Intercontinental playoffs<\/p>\n
The intercontinental playoff tournament will bring together six teams from around the world, vying for two qualifying places.<\/p>\n
Two teams from CONCACAF and one each from Asia, Africa, South America and Oceania will compete.<\/p>\n
Playoff teams:<\/p>\n
AFC – Iraq<\/p>\n
CAF – Congo<\/p>\n
CONCACAF – Jamaica, Suriname<\/p>\n
CONMEBOL – Bolivia<\/p>\n
OFC – New Caledonia<\/p>\n
The two highest-ranked teams, Iraq and Congo, are seeded and automatically advance to one of two playoff finals.<\/p>\n
The four lowest-ranked teams are unseeded and will be drawn to play in two semifinals, with the winners advancing to one of the two playoff finals.<\/p>\n
The two winning teams from the finals qualify for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
The international playoffs will be held between Mar. 23-31.<\/p>\n
World Cup draw<\/p>\n
The draw for the World Cup will be held in Washington DC on Dec. 5 before the teams advancing via the playoffs have been confirmed.<\/p>\n
The World Cup kicks off June 11 and the final is scheduled for July 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 The final six places for the 2026 World Cup will be determined by two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-61217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}