Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been held to thin the field for the final tournament.[69] They are held within the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For each tournament, FIFA decides the number of places awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally based on the relative strength of the confederations' teams.
The qualification process can start as early as almost three years before the final tournament and last over a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments differ between confederations. Usually, one or two places are awarded to winners of intercontinental play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed team from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup.[70] From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations receive automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify, as previous defending champions had uncompetitive performances at subsequent editions of the FIFA World Cup. Brazil, winners in 2002, were the first defending champions to play qualifying matches.[71]
Final tournament
The final tournament format since 1998 has had 32 national teams competing over the course of a month in the host nations. There are two stages: the group stage, followed by the knockout stage.[72]
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, with the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups.[73] The other teams are assigned to different "pots", usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in each pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints have been applied to the draw to ensure that no group contains more than two European teams or more than one team from any other confederation.[74]
Each group plays a round-robin tournament in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. This means that a total of six matches are played within a group. The last round of matches of each group is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams.[75] The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, three points have been awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss (before, winners received two points).
Considering six matches in a group each with three possible outcomes (win, draw, loss), there are 729 (= 36) possible final table outcomes for the 40 possible combinations of the four teams' points.[76] However, 14 of the 40 points combinations (or 207 of the 729 possible outcomes) lead to ties between the second and third places. In such case, the ranking among these teams is determined by:[77]
- Greatest combined goal difference in all group matches
- Greatest combined number of goals scored in all group matches
- If more than one team remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined as follows:
- Greatest number of points in head-to-head matches among those teams
- Greatest goal difference in head-to-head matches among those teams
- Greatest number of goals scored in head-to-head matches among those teams
- Fair play points, defined by the number of yellow and red cards received in the group stage:
- Yellow card: minus 1 point
- Indirect red card (as a result of a second yellow card): minus 3 points
- Direct red card: minus 4 points
- Yellow card and direct red card: minus 5 points
- If any of the teams above remain level after applying the above criteria, their ranking will be determined by the drawing of lots
The knockout stage is a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the round of 16 (or the second round) in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.[72]
On 10 January 2017, FIFA approved a new format, the 48-team World Cup (to accommodate more teams), which was to consist of 16 groups of three teams each, with two teams qualifying from each group, to form a round of 32 knockout stage, to be implemented by 2026.[78] On 14 March 2023, FIFA approved a revised format of the 2026 tournament, which features 12 groups of four teams each, with the top 8 third-placed teams joining the group winners and runners-up in a new round of 32.[79][80]
In March 2025, it was reported that FIFA was considering an one-off expansion to 64 teams for the 2030 FIFA World Cup, the centennial anniversary of the FIFA World Cup.[81]
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