World Cup 2026 Preview Series

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2026 World Cup

2026 World Cup in Numbers: Transcript/Reflection

Reflection

Let us know your answers by coming along to our World Cup forum

  1. How well do you think you did in this listening?
  2. Could you understand the main ideas?
  3. How much detail could you understand?
  4. Would you be able to explain some of the main points to someone else?

Discussion

Let us know your answers by coming along to our World Cup forum

  1. Do you think that 48 teams is too many for the World Cup?
  2. What do you think about three countries hosting the World Cup?
  3. Which of the debutants will do the best?
  4. Which team will win the World Cup?

Transcript

Introduction

OK, so the 2026 World Cup kicks off in Mexico City on June 11 when one of the hosts Mexico face South Africa. This will be the 23rd World Cup, the 23rd version of the competition, that started almost 100 years ago in 1930.

Hosts

Mexico are not the only hosts of this tournament. There are two other countries that will share the hosting – there are three co-hosts: Mexico; Canada and the United States of America. This will be the first time that three countries have co-hosted the tournament and it will also be the first time that Canada will host the finals. The USA hosted in 1994 so this will be the second time for them, while it will be the third time for Mexico as they previously hosted in 1970 and 1986. 

Groups

Another change in this year’s tournament is the number of teams involved or taking part. For the first time there will be 48 teams. This is an increase of 16 teams from recent tournaments. This also means there will be more groups in the first stage (or group stage) than before. Each group has four teams so there will now be 12 groups in total. In the last World Cup in Qatar there were eight groups of four.

How long?

So, in total there will be 104 matches which is an increase from 64 in the last seven tournaments. And this means that the World Cup will take place over 39 days which is a week longer than usual. A lot of football indeed!

Qualifying

So, how can teams qualify for the knock-out rounds? Well, similar to previous tournaments, the top two sides in each group will qualify for the next stage. This will give 24 teams so the remaining eight teams will be those teams that finished third in the group with the best records. This will mean 32 teams for the first knock-out round.

Venues

We have already said that this World Cup will be played in three different countries and there will be16 different host cities in these three countries. There will be three in Mexico; two in Canada and 11 in the USA. As we have already mentioned, the opening game will be in Mexico while the final takes place in New Jersey in the USA.

Debuts

Brazil is the only country that has played in all of the World Cups but do you know that there are fou countries that will make their debuts this time? Cape Verde; Curacao; Jordan and Uzbekistan.