The first three spots at the 2026 FIFA World Cup have officially been clinched.
Co-hosts United States, Mexico, and Canada have officially clinched their spots for the next edition of the tournament, FIFA confirmed Tuesday. Tournament hosts have normally received an automatic berth into the World Cup, but the 2026 edition will be hosted by three different countries.
The 2026 World Cup will be expanded to a 48-team field, with a total of six CONCACAF nations representing their federation. While the USMNT, Mexico, and Canada have already qualified for the summer tournament, three additional countries will also reach the finals through a qualifying cycle.
“In addition, the FIFA Council confirmed that, in line with the long-standing tradition of having all hosts competing at the FIFA World Cup, as well as sporting and operational considerations, the hosts of the FIFA World Cup 2026, namely Canada, Mexico and the USA, will qualify automatically for the final round of the competition, with their slots therefore being deducted from the overall allocation of six assigned to CONCACAF,” a FIFA statement said.
The USMNT, Mexico, and Canada all reached the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, but only the Americans made it out of the group stage. Gregg Berhalter’s squad finished second in Group B behind England while Mexico and Canada failed to make it out of their respective groups.
World Cup Qualifying for both AFC (Asian Football Confederation) and CONMEBOL nations is slated to begin later in 2023, while UEFA’s qualifying cycle will kick off in March 2025. There has been no announcement made yet in regard to CONCACAF, CAF (Confederation of African Football), or OFC (Oceanic Football Confederation).
Sounds like Thierry Henry is throwing his hat in the ring for the USMNT position. What he has going for him: star appeal, he will have every USMNT players respect who all watched Henry play growing up, potential big upside in swaying dual nationals plying their trade in Europe, and he demands the strive for greatness. He is a good coach. And why not give him a chance. He has international coaching experience.
His record as a manager is 13W 9D 27L. I know it’s hard to judge him on his Montreal stint since they basically played on the road all season but he wasn’t very successful at Monaco either.
I am actually kind of disappointed. I like the qualifiers and having meaningful games to watch spread out over a long period of time.
i’ll be curious what direction this pushes quali in 2030. it will still have some teeth — 3 “playing” teams qualifying from the region — but be minus the big dogs next cycle. but after that the 1994-2018 hex model doesn’t really work if everyone would get out.
it also should have implications for future coach hirings if you don’t have to qualify this time and next time and for the near future will have it easier. are concacaf knowledge and tactics that meaningful or do you lean global? might depend on the quali process and how easy it looks.
You’d think they’d have to move to groups like most other regions. 2 groups of 6, top 3 qualify in each qualify. We’re obviously a long ways out but adding teams 13-16 doesn’t seem necessary. Currently that’s Suriname, Antigua, St Kitts, and Nicaragua of course we’re a ways out for those programs to grow.