What are the inter-confederation play-offs for the 2026 World Cup?

The 2026 World Cup is rattling towards us and the qualification process will soon have started all around the world.

This tournament will be a historic one as the first to feature a massive 48 nations. It will also have three different host nations in the USA, Canada and Mexico, all of whom are assured of places in the group stage.

Around the world, different federations will hold their own qualification processes that will jointly confirm the 48 teams battling for the ultimate prize in North America. It's not quite as simple as teams competing against those in their federation to qualify, though, as there is also the inter-confederation play-off to think about.

Here's an explainer of what that is and how teams could end up in it.

How is 2026 World Cup qualifying divided up?

There are six different federations around the world that hold qualification campaigns. They are the AFC (Asia), UEFA (Europe), CONMEBOL (South America), CONCACAF (North, Central America and the Caribbean), CAF (Africa) and the OFC (Oceania).

The breakdown of how many World Cup places each federation gets is as follows:

AFC: 8
CAF: 9
CONCACAF: 6 (including three hosts)
CONMEBOL: 6
OFC: 1
UEFA: 16

That accounts for 46 of the 48 places and then the other two places will be allocated thanks to a newly expanded mini-tournament called the inter-confederation play-offs.

What is the World Cup inter-confederation play-off?

Australia beat Peru on penalties in 2022 / Matthew Ashton - AMA/GettyImages

Essentially, it is a six-team qualification tournament held in one of the host countries. It'll feature one team from each of the six federations, except for UEFA, as well as an additional team from the federation of the host nations, which is CONCACAF in this instance.

This means that while there will certainly be 16 teams from UEFA at the final tournament, the other figures above could rise by one or two (in CONCACAF's case) when the entire process has been completed.

Two of the six teams will be seeded based on the FIFA World Ranking. Those seeded teams will play for a spot in the World Cup against the winners of the first two knockout games involving the other four teams. The four lowest-ranked teams face an opponent and the two winners face the two seeded teams.

How do teams get into the inter-confederation play-off?

It differs for each federation, but there is always a certain point in the qualification process when a team has done well enough to get another shot but not enough for an automatic spot.

AFC

In Asian qualification, the fourth round of the process sees the six third and fourth-placed teams from the previous round get divided into two groups of three. They face each other in a neutral venue, with the two group winners going into the World Cup. The runners-up compete home and away over two legs to see which Asian side goes into the inter-confederation play-offs.

OFC

The smallest of the federations, there will only be a maximum of two OFC teams at the World Cup. After a group stage involving eight teams, the top two advance to a third round which is a single-elimination knockout round. The winner goes to the World Cup and the loser comes into the play-offs.

CAF

In Africa, there are nine groups of six teams which results in the group winners heading to the World Cup. The four best runners-up from those groups then enter a play-off of their own, the winner of which goes into the inter-confederation play-offs.

CONMEBOL

This has always been the simplest federation as ten nations go into a league table. The top six in South America go to the World Cup and the seventh-placed team goes into the inter-confederation play-offs.

CONCACAF

In the final round of CONCACAF qualifying, three group winners go to the World Cup and the two best-ranked runners-up go into the inter-confederation play-offs.

When are the 2026 World Cup inter-confederation play-offs?

Right now, there are no official dates for when the play-offs will take place.

The two final play-offs for the 2022 World Cup - Argentina vs Peru and Costa Rica vs New Zealand - took place on June 13-14 2022, roughly five months before the main tournament officially began.

However, as the 2026 World Cup starts in June, the play-offs are likely to take place earlier in the year.