Doha, December 04 (QNA) - The draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026, which will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19, will take place Friday, with the participation of the Qatar national football team.

A total of 48 countries will take part in next year's World Cup tournament.

The draw will take place at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, in which the 48 countries will be divided into 12 groups of four teams.

Qatar qualified for the World Cup 2026 after ranking first in Group A in the fourth round of Asian qualifiers, ahead of Oman and the UAE.

This is Qatar's second consecutive participation, and its first through the qualifiers, after participating in the previous edition of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 as host.

FIFA distributed the participating teams into four levels according to the latest ranking issued on Nov. 19, so that the teams of each level would be placed in a separate pot during the draw process. The host countries will be in the first level regardless of their ranking, while the remaining teams will be distributed among the other pots according to their ranking.

Qatar will be placed in the third level before the draw, which includes Norway, Panama, Egypt, Algeria, Scotland, Paraguay, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, which means that it will not be placed in the same group as them.

The second level consists of Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, Iran, South Korea, Ecuador, Austria, and Australia. The fourth level includes Jordan, Cape Verde, Ghana, Curacao, Haiti, and New Zealand, along with the four teams (A, B, C, D) that qualified from the European play-offs, and the two teams (A, B) that qualified from the global play-offs.

The draw ceremony will be attended by the coaches of the qualified teams, officials of the participating national federations, and representatives of the teams that are still in the race for the remaining qualifying spots through the global and European playoffs.

The 2026 World Cup will witness an unprecedented Arab presence, after seven Arab teams officially secured qualification, namely, in addition to Qatar: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.

The World Cup play-off, which will be held in March, is expected to raise Iraq’s chances of joining the finals, potentially increasing the number of Arab teams to eight, in a historic achievement for Arab football at the World Cup level.

Some Arab teams have a long history in the World Cup, with Tunisia, Morocco and Saudi Arabia recording their seventh participation, while Algeria's participation will be its fifth in history in the 2026 World Cup, and Egypt's fourth.

In contrast, Jordan is making its first appearance in the World Cup as the newest Arab team addition, while Qatar is participating for the second time in a row after its previous hosting of the tournament, and Iraq may return to the World Cup if it passes the global play-off to participate for the second time after its first appearance in 1986.

According to the procedures officially announced by FIFA, the draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026 finals will begin by placing the 12 teams from each of the four pots into separate containers.

The three host nations will be placed in Pot 1, while the four pots for the teams that qualified through the European play-offs and the two pots for the teams that qualified through the intercontinental play-offs will be placed in Pot 4, ensuring a balanced distribution of teams during the draw.

The draw ceremony is scheduled to begin with all the teams from Pot 1 being drawn to groups A to L. The remaining teams will then be drawn from Pots B through D.

FIFA has imposed specific restrictions on the World Cup 2026 draw process. The three host nations will first be designated with different colored balls to ensure a predetermined selection process: the green ball will represent Mexico, placing them at the top of Group A; the red ball will represent Canada, placing them at the top of Group B; and the blue ball will represent the United States, placing them at the top of Group C.

As for the remaining nine teams in the pot 1, they will be allocated balls of the same color, and each team will be placed at the top of the group that will be determined by the draw, thus ensuring an organized and balanced distribution.

In this context, FIFA was keen to avoid the two highest-ranked teams (Spain, ranked first, and Argentina, ranked second) facing each other before the final (in the event that they topped their groups in the first round), by placing them in two separate paths leading to the semi-finals, in order to maintain a balance in the distribution of teams. The same will apply to both (France, ranked third) and (England, ranked fourth), where the two paths will be chosen randomly, in an effort to avoid the best-ranked teams facing each other early on.

As for Pots 2, 3, and 4, each team's position within its group will be determined according to the draw procedure. This ensures that each team's position within its group is determined based on the pot from which it was drawn and the group it was placed in.

FIFA will apply the principle of no more than one team from the same confederation being in the same group. This applies to all confederations except UEFA, which has 16 teams participating in the tournament. Since this number of teams cannot be distributed across the 12 groups, no more than two European teams can be in any one group.

The implementation of the principle of separation means that no more than one team from the same continental federation should be in one group, by applying the continental federations’ restriction to the three teams that will compete within each of the two paths related to the two seats allocated for the global play-off in Pot 4.

FIFA had set Dec. 6 as the date for announcing the details of the group stage matches, in order to achieve the best possible conditions for all teams, and to enable fans in different countries around the world to follow their favorite teams across different time zones, according to the rule followed in determining the stadiums of the matches and the timing of their start. (QNA)