Norway is going to the World Cup for the first time since 1998, sealing its place at the 2026 tournament after a perfect qualifying campaign that ended with eight wins from eight and rare victories home and away over Italy. The squad was announced on Thursday in a video message from King Harald V, who said the country had waited a long time to get back there.
The king’s message carried the scale of the moment. Norway had not played at a World Cup in 28 years, and the return comes after a run in which Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard have given the team a level of quality it has not often been able to count on. Haaland scored five goals and set up two more in the 11-1 win over Moldova, then followed that with a hat-trick in a 5-0 victory over Israel. He also became the fastest player in history to reach 50 international goals, doing it in 46 appearances, and added another milestone in club football by becoming the fastest player to reach 100 Premier League goals in 111 appearances.
That attacking edge is why Norway has carried itself like a side that expected to be here. Haaland won the Premier League golden boot again with 27 goals in the 2025-26 season, while Odegaard remains the team’s most creative force when fit. The Arsenal midfielder missed Norway’s March friendlies because of injuries, and he went through at least five separate injuries over the season, a reminder that the squad’s ceiling has always been tied to his health as much as to Haaland’s finishing. Even so, coach Stale Solbakken said the team enters the tournament believing it has a strong squad and one that has delivered over a long stretch.
Norway’s path makes the achievement harder to dismiss. Its best World Cup finishes came in 1938 and 1998, both trips ending in the last 16, and the country’s current FIFA ranking of 31 does not place it among the giants of the game. But ranking points do not capture what this qualifying run did: it put Norway above Italy across two meetings and left no doubt about how it got here. The squad also includes Strand Larsen, another part of the attacking mix that helped turn a promising team into a qualified one.
The next question is no longer whether Norway belongs at the World Cup. It is whether a team that won every qualifying match, leaned on two headline stars and rediscovered its place on the sport’s biggest stage can turn a long-awaited return into something more than a story of relief.
