Doha, Qatar: The official draw for the FIFA U-17 World Cup Qatar 2026 will take place at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters today.
The Qatar 2026 draw, along with the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup Morocco, will be live-streamed on FIFA+, TikTok and YouTube from 4:00pm Qatar time.
This will be the second year in a row in which these now annual U-17 showpiece events will be staged in Qatar and Morocco, which will host the competitions up until the 2029 instalments inclusive.
The FIFA U-17 World Cup Qatar 2026, which will be the 21st edition of the tournament, is set to be contested between November 19 and December 13, with 48 teams poised to compete for the global crown. Portugal took the trophy home at last year’s event, which was the inaugural edition under the expanded format.
For the draw, the 48 qualified nations will be placed into four pots of 12 teams each, with hosts Qatar assigned to pot 1 and the remaining sides allocated according to the FIFA ranking system. This system is based on the total number of points obtained over the last five editions of the FIFA U-17 World Cup, held in 2025, 2023, 2019, 2017 and 2015.
The top teams in the ranking will be allotted to pot 1 alongside Qatar, with the remaining sides placed into pots 2, 3 and 4 accordingly. The 12 tournament groups will each consist of four teams, with one drawn from each pot.
As two of CAF’s qualified teams will only be confirmed after the draw, the seeding for the tournament has yet to be finalised. For the purposes of the draw, placeholders featuring the confederation name will be used for these two teams. CAF has been allocated ten slots in total.
The 10th edition of the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup will be staged in Morocco from October 17 to November 7.
The qualified teams for Qatar 2026
AFC: Qatar (hosts), Australia, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.
Concacaf: Costa Rica, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, USA
CONMEBOL: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Venezuela
OFC: Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand
UEFA: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Serbia, Spain
