2030 World Cup qualifying explained

42 places, six confederations

A 48-team World Cup has room for 48 nations, and six of them are settled before a ball is kicked: Morocco, Portugal and Spain as hosts, and Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as hosts of the three centenary matches in South America. Each of the six takes one of its own confederation's places, which is why South America, with three hosts among ten members, has only three places left to play for.

The other 42 places are decided by qualifying. 40 are won directly inside the six confederations. The last 2 go to the winners of the inter-confederation play-off, a small tournament between one team from each confederation except Europe.

The allocation below is the one used for 2026. FIFA has not published a separate allocation for 2030, and none at all for a 64-team tournament; the 64-team column scales the current numbers and is the simulator's assumption, not an official figure.

The inter-confederation play-off

Five teams enter — one each from Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Oceania — for two World Cup places. In the simulator the two highest-ranked entrants are seeded straight into the two finals. Of the other three, the highest-ranked has a bye and the remaining two meet in a single first-round match for the last place in the finals. Every match is a single game on neutral ground, so no side has a home crowd, and a level score goes to penalties.

The 2026 edition was a six-team tournament, with an extra team from the host confederation. Whether 2030 keeps that shape is one of the details FIFA has still to publish.

How open is it?

We played the whole of qualifying 20,000 times. 186 of the 211 nations reached the World Cup at least once, though for 57 of them it happened in fewer than one campaign in a hundred. The odds table lists every nation's chances, and each nation has its own page with the route it has to take.

Seeding everywhere follows the FIFA ranking of 7 October 2026, the one the simulator currently ships with. Real draws will use whichever ranking is current when they are made, so the real groups will differ.