How does the World Cup draw work? The AP explains FIFA’s process for dividing teams into groups

By NOAH TRISTER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The draw for the 2026 World Cup takes place Friday at the Kennedy Center , for the purpose of dividing the 48-team field into 12 groups of four. Once the tournament starts, 32 teams will advance from those preliminary groups to the single-elimination knockout rounds.

The 12 round-robin World Cup groups are designated Group A, Group B … and so on, down to Group L.

Here’s an explanation of how the draw works.

Picking from pots

Balls corresponding with the competing countries will be separated into four pots of 12, and each group will include one team drawn from each pot. The pots are as follows, with each team’s current FIFA ranking in parentheses.

Pot 1 — Spain (1), Argentina (2), France (3), England (4), Brazil (5), Portugal (6), Netherlands (7),