Soccer-Debutants, heat and distance shape mood ahead of 2026 World Cup draw

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By Julien Pretot

PARIS, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Debutants will take centre stage at Friday’s 2026 World Cup draw along with concerns over heat, player welfare and the practical challenge of staging football’s biggest tournament across three countries during the peak of a North American summer.

For the first time in the tournament’s history, 48 teams will be divided into 12 groups of four at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., producing a 104-match schedule across 16 host cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Soccer’s world governing body FIFA has framed the expansion as a watershed moment for inclusivity, opening the door for nations that had never qualified before — Cape Verde, Uzbekistan, Jordan and Curacao, which, with a population of 150,000, is by far the smallest nation to take part. 

Others, such as Haiti, return after long waits while Italy still need a playoff to try to avoid the embarrassment of missing out on their third World Cup in a row.

The scale of the tournament is heightening scrutiny over conditions for players and supporters, particularly in venues where summer temperatures regularly climb into the high 30s Celsius (mid-90s Fahrenheit).

U.S. host cities, notably in the Midwest, the Southeast and parts of the Southwest, are expected to experience extreme heat and high humidity during June and July, with thunderstorms potentially wreaking havoc with the schedule.

This year’s Club World Cup in the U.S. served as a dress rehearsal and scorching heat was a major concern.

Medical experts and players’ unions have raised fears of heat stress, dehydration and reduced recovery times, especially in a format where sides may need to play up to eight matches to lift the trophy – one more than in the 32-team events of the past.

FIFA has highlighted the use of indoor or retractable-roof stadiums, including venues in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Vancouver, as a key mitigation measure, allowing organisers to control temperatures for a portion of the match programme.

EUROPEAN AUDIENCES

However, many fixtures will still be held in open-air stadiums where cooling systems are not an option and where adjusting kickoffs may be the only immediate protection.

Those kickoff times are not straightforward. Broadcasters are seeking prime-time slots for European and Asian audiences, which could push matches into afternoon hours locally, when the heat is most intense.

Balancing commercial demands with player safety has become one of the central logistical puzzles of the tournament. Venue assignments and start times will only be revealed the day after Friday’s draw, when FIFA unveils the updated match schedule.

The ceremony will place teams into four seeding pots based on world rankings and continental rules. The three hosts are seeded into separate groups alongside top-ranked nations such as defending champions Argentina, Spain, France and England.

Provided they win their groups, those teams cannot meet until the later knockout rounds.

POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY

The draw also comes against the backdrop of renewed political uncertainty in the U.S. following the return of Donald Trump to the White House, raising questions over security coordination, immigration protocols and visa processing for teams, officials and travelling supporters.

FIFA has sought to reassure participating nations that operational planning across the three host countries remains unaffected, though the tournament’s scale relies heavily on smooth cross-border logistics and consistent entry procedures.

Iran has said it will boycott the draw ceremony in protest at the limited allocation of visas for the Iranian delegation.

FIFA, which said on Monday the 42 teams who had qualified so far would attend, has not responded to requests for comment from Reuters.

For the many debutants and smaller nations appearing in the finals thanks to the tournament’s expansion, heat management may be as big a competitive factor as tactical preparation.

For heavyweights chasing the trophy, the draw will determine not only their opponents but also the intensity of the physical road ahead.

Some venues offer climate-controlled environments but in other places squads will be exposed to daytime heat stress and longer flights between matches, variables that could shape squad selection and rotation strategies.

The final will be staged at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in July, capping a tournament FIFA president Gianni Infantino has billed as “the most inclusive World Cup ever”. Yet inclusivity comes at the cost of scale and scale brings complexity.

As the draw is made in Washington, coaches will be searching less for big-name adversaries than for manageable logistics.

Controlling exposure to the heat may prove as decisive as avoiding the tournament’s biggest footballing powers, especially for the teams simply trying to survive the opening rounds in conditions few have faced before.

The new format has also diluted one of the traditional sources of tension in World Cup draws, with the proliferation of groups and protected seeds making the emergence of a true “Group of Death” very unlikely, and reducing the sense of immediate jeopardy that has typically surrounded the ceremony.

(Reporting by Julien Pretot, editing by Ed Osmond)