Pre-match: 2026 FIFA World Cup Draw - December 5, 2025 - 12 PM EDT

The listings I am seeing show normal Fox programming from 11:30AM-3:00PM tomorrow. No sign of the draw anywhere. Is this the case for others or has my local affiliate opted out of broadcasting it? I looked at Telemundo and they do have the draw listed, so I can still watch in Spanish if I have to.

 

and any mods paying attention (@dark knight, @bungadiri, ?) we might (meaning absolutely beyond any shadow of a doubt) need some clarification on how you are going to handle the "no politics" rule with politicians speaking at this event.

which i predict will be more off topic than anything even bs posters can manage...

 

Something that we will need to be aware of that hasn't been discussed much is that by the end of Pot 3, there needs to be at least one group with two UEFA teams and one CAF team. Otherwise the Iraq playoff trio would roll into a geographic clash as there would be no where for it to go.

 

Weird question which may have already been addressed and if so I'm sorry.
How are they gonna handle the US, and the Inter-Confed Playoff spots for the draw, since both contain potential concacrap opponents? Will we not be allowed to draw those slots because of that potentiality? I would assume so, even though I don't expect the Concacrappers to advance in either playoff.

 

The Athletic with a draw simulator

🚨 @TheAthletic's World Cup Draw simulator is live! 🚨https://t.co/GeM6jI1qwF pic.twitter.com/XBPccLVWE9

— Henry Bushnell (@HenryBushnell) December 4, 2025

 

Scotland/Morocco/Jordan. We can't possibly be that lucky (yes, Morocco's rough, but still).

 

Austria from pot 2 is the name I want. Gets rid of our Euro requirement and softens up the possibilities for pot 4. Still leaves us with the possibility of picking up a weaker Asian or African team.

 

The simulator has every possible draw and based on ELO the easiest draw would be Austria, South Africa, and New Zealand. And the hardest Morocco, Norway, and Euro Path B.

 

Hey The Athletic validating my subscription. The first few ones of these I've found all struggled with non Europeans from the same confederation being group together, the next few struggled with putting one European team in each group, and the last one I found nailed the first two but put the 2 intercontinental playoff teams in groups they couldn't be in.

I've seen too many of these and it's hard to take stock in any one. So because I'm bored, I did 20 and am gonna put them in to Very Happy, Happy, Okay, Sad, Very Sad categories and see where they stack up (I'm sure some will quibble with where I put some of these, but just for an idea.

Very Happy:
South Africa/Croatia/New Zealand
Tunisia/Croatia/Jordan
Tunisia/Australia/Turkey's Path
Croatia/Qatar/Ghana

Happy:

Qatar/Morocco/Ukraine's Path
Scotland/Jordan/Colombia
South Africa/South Korea/Denmark's Path
Ivory Coast/Australia/Denmark's Path
Scotland/Jordan/Austria


Okay:

Norway/Ecuador/New Zealand
Ivory Coast/South Korea/Turkey's path
Uzbekistan/Morocco/Turkey's Path (this very close to sad, but I'm putting it here because I'm not sure Turkey actually wins their playoff)
Saudi Arabia/Morocco/Ukraine's Path
Uzbekistan/Morocco/Ukraine's Path
Ivory Coast/Ecuador/Italy's Path



Sad:
Norway/Austria/Ghana
Ivory Coast/Australia/Italy's Path
Uzbekistan/Senegal/Italy's Path



Very Sad:
Colombia/Jordan/Italy's Path
Norway/Colombia/Jordan


So the draws I'd be happy with outnumber the draws I'd be sad about, but I'm sure other people might disagree where I listed those (hell I may rearrange some if I give them another look)

 

I'm too foolish and tired to figure out the ramifications on odds if say we draw a UEFA side from Pot 2, though I agree, Austria is basically one of the four weakest teams in Pot 2 to me (I REALLY don't agree with FIFA rankings, and I disagree w/a bit of Pot 2, FIFA rankings in particular seem to have butchered Pot 3, but really I suppose it's simply the stupid playoffs that are sabotaging Pot 3 and Pot 4 and basically revealing Pot of Golds and Pots of Coal to #1 and #2 seeds based on whether they end up pulling a nightmare side (a top 27 side in Pot 3, or a UEFA Path or DR Congo Path option from Pot 4). There is something truly ridiculous in the reality that you coul end up with a top flight UEFA side, or reasonably strong CAF or Conmebol side, or just absolute dross in Pot 3 depending upon the ping pong ball, while Pot 4 is half murderers row options for us, and half group of life options (Jordan, New Zealand, Cape Verde, Ghana, though both the latter two teams have had some strong performances).

 

Its just stupid that the playoff route teams auto go to Pot 4. So dumb.

 

I should note, instead of focusing on which teams I'd really like to draw, which seems to some degree, pointless (especially in Pot 2, where you've basically got about an 8% chance of drawing said team), I prefer to focus on teams I just want to avoid (or UEFA path groups)....

For me that would be:
Pot 2:
Tier 1 Horror:
Colombia: Annihilated us 18 months ago, and seem to be back on form of late.

Morocco: I can't decide how good they are, was WC '22 a fluke? Cup of Nations '23 suggests it was, but otoh, they won a qualifying group of life without breaking a sweat and clearly have elite players.

Ecuador: My worry is largely about that defense, and how much more lethal they could be if the stars that missed the October friendly are available in June. No question they had a top 5ish defense in the world '23-'25.

Uruguay: They toyed with us in '24, and we smashed them in '25. I fear a revenge game, and them being on point, but man, that November game was shocking.

Tier 2: Discomfort:
Croatia: Part of me says, "they're old as ----, I'm not worried, and then I have flashbacks of them smashing Canada in '22, or an old Czech team smashing us in '06. Old but still talented.

Switzerland: It's pretty much entirely about the '21 friendly, and the fact that they always punch their weight at minimum, and rarely fail to max their talent. So we have to be on point, and not doing that stupid "good game/bad game/good game/bad game" trend we have going back more than half a decade. We're better, but they are WAY MORE consistent.

Pot 3:
Tier 1:
Terror:
Norway: Haalaand vs our defense is the stuff of nightmares. That MF is legit too.

Tier 2:
Discomfort:

Ivory Coast: Severely underranked at 62 in ELO, which would put them 9th in the pot, I actually have them 2nd or 3rd in the pot. They were excellent in qualifying, and after a horrific group stage in AFCON '23, they won it all. They aren't the mighty '06-'14 group who were snake bit with groups of death, and getting cheated by Greece in '14 (fake penalty earned via diving in injury time knocked Greece into the knockouts and Ivory Coast's last gasp golden generation out of the world cup forever, one of those immense injustices that has gone totally forgotten). These guys aren't that caliber, but they are pretty consistent. Since stepping in dog poopl in the group stage of AFCON '23 (How in hell did they lose to Equatorial Guinea 4-0?!?!), they haven't lost a single meaningful game, going undefeated in qualifying, and running all the way to a Finals victory in the knockouts of that AFCON 3 years ago (Extra Time/Penalty Wins over Senegal and Mali, before beating DR Congo, and then Nigeria in a rematch of their group stage defeat in the Final....

Paraguay: Not really nervous, but they're definitely better than a bunch of those Pot 3 sides.

South Africa: Had a really good qualifying campaign with only 1 bad performance. They also finished 3rd in AFCON '23.

Algeria: I'm not sure how to feel about them, I guess my concern is largely connected to how they played competent soccer in 2010, and very well in the '14 WC, and then won the AFCON in '19. They qualified quite easily in a cake group as well.

Pot 4:
Terror:
1. Euro Path A: I probably shouldn't be afraid of Italy, but after them having made repeated runs deep in tournaments when working under very negative press and bad form, I feel like they're threatening vampires that might be hard to kill.

2. Euro Path C: This is exclusively about Turkey. I'm not at all concerned with the rest of them, but if Turkey win's that playoff, then you do not want to draw path C. Hell, they wrapped qualifying by coming from behind to draw Spain, AWAY. Maybe I should worry a bit about Kosovo too, they played shockingly well this cycle.

Concerned:
3. EURO Path B/D: This is basically just about Ukraine and Denmark. Both nations can be really difficult to beat at times, Ukraine is playing well enough, while Denmark has been total --- of late.....

4. CAF Squad: I'm not bothered at all by Jordan, partly because I know nothing about them. New Zealand should be a push over. Cape Verde has gotten shocking results for a decade running at this point at the Cup of Nations and Qualifying level (basically have draws and wins against about 5 or 6 of the traditional top 10 of CAF including Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana etc), meanwhile Ghana has quite a diaspora to pull from, and their quality can change quite easily based on form, and roster. Otoh, they, like Ivory Coast, are simply not what they were '06-'14 either, but Ghana is a distinctly worse version of that than Ivory Coast.


So for me anyway, what this comes down to is trying to draw from the weaker half of Pot 2, rather than the 4-6 squads that scare the hell out of me, or make me nervous, avoiding Norway, and trying to avoid Italy and Turkey. As long as we do that, I'm not really too concerned, but man, it goes without saying, that looking at what we can draw from Pot 3 and Pot 4 is just utterly asinine.

Pot 3 can be a team as highly ranked as 11th, or a pile of teams ranked in the 60s and worse. how does that make sense?

Pot 4 similarly is made up of a bunch of teams likely to qualify in the top 25, and then a pile of teams ranked between about 58-80. Again, how does that make any sense?

We thought groups of death and groups of life were a thing of the past after they started seeding the whole tournament 8 years ago, but now with 48 teams and these playoffs, it is absolutely back. Except with such a large tournament we are likely to see 2-3, or 2-3 Groups of death and groups of life, depending upon how things play out.

 

One other thing worth noting:

How are we paired?

If we finish group winner: We get BEFIJ 3rd place team. So it's worth looking at those options.

If we finish runner up we'll need to worry about Group G, so pay attention to who is drawn into Group G, as a runner up, we'd get that groups runner up.

If we finish 3rd, and advance, we'd get the group E, I or K group winner.


For R16's, relevant group as a winner is likely the Group G winner (if they defeat their 3rd place finishing opponent)., and for R16's if we advance as a runner up, we'd square off w/the winner of a matchup between the Group J winner and the Group H runner up.

A ton of variables in this expanded format.

 

Not really draw related but I found this interesting. It has a near 0% chance of happening, but The US could in theory have to go to Canada if Wikipedia isn't lying to me.

If The US were to finish 3rd in it's group, there's 495 possible permutations for which 3rd place teams advance and by my count 19 (less than 4%) of them result in The US playing The Group K winner in Kansas City. IF we won that game, we would go to Vancouver for The Round of 16.

The odds of all 3 of those things happening are near astronomical, but didn't realize there's technically a path to us playing a game outside The US

 

Well, if it does happen, I'm sure the long and extremely strong friendship between our two countries would lead to the Canadians in the stands to root for us.

Right? Right?

 

this is a cool site to play around with. obviously the margins are very thin, but we have a slightly higher chance of drawing ecuador and norway than most others.

https://wc2026.app

 

As if that's not crazy enough, should the US advance to that game in Vancouver, they could potentially play the winners of Group B. Guess who has already been pre-allocated into that group? That's right, not only could we play a game outside our home country next summer, there's even an astronomically slim chance we could play a true away game at a home World Cup. Imagine the scenes if that happened.

 

Tom Brady as one of the people doing the draw