CONMEBOL qualifying for the 2030 World Cup

What is at stake

South America is governed by the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), which has 10 members in the FIFA ranking. At a 48-team World Cup it has 6 places, three of them already taken by Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay as centenary hosts. That leaves 3 to be won on the pitch, plus one more route through the inter-confederation play-off.

If the tournament grows to 64 teams — a proposal FIFA has been studying, see the 2030 guide — the simulator assumes 6 places to win here instead of 3. FIFA has published no allocation for a 64-team edition, so that figure simply scales the current one.

The highest-ranked CONMEBOL nation in the 7 October 2026 FIFA ranking is Argentina, 2nd in the world.

How the simulator plays it

South America plays one league of ten: every nation meets every other at home and away, eighteen matchdays in all, the way CONMEBOL has run its qualifying since the 1998 cycle. Matches can end level; nothing is decided on penalties.

Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay have already qualified as hosts of the three centenary matches. In the simulator they still play the full league — their results shape the table for everyone else — but they cannot take a qualifying place. The top three of the other seven nations qualify, and the next best goes to the inter-confederation play-off.

What is official so far

South America has six places at a 48-team World Cup plus one in the inter-confederation play-off. With three of those six taken by the centenary hosts, only three remain to be won — by seven nations, where the 2026 cycle offered six places to ten. That makes 2030 an unusually hard qualifying campaign for the likes of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.

How the three hosts take part in the real competition has not been set out in detail; keeping them in the league is the simulator's assumption, chosen because it leaves the ten-team calendar intact.

Who qualifies: simulated odds

These figures come from playing the entire campaign 20,000 times with the simulator's own match engine and the ratings in the table. They describe the model, not a forecast of real results four years out: squads change, and the draw for the real groups has not been made. How the simulation works.

Two nations are close to certain: Brazil (>99.9%) and Colombia (99.6%) qualify in at least nine simulated campaigns out of ten.

Favoured but not safe: Ecuador (83.0%).

The real contest is among Venezuela (31.4%) and Chile (28.3%). These are the campaigns where one result changes everything, and the ones most worth playing out yourself.

At the other end, one nation qualifies in fewer than one campaign in fifty. On average the simulation sends 3.6 of these 7 nations to the finals, more than the 3 direct places because of the inter-confederation play-off.