The 2026 FIFA World Cup will begin on 11 June at the Azteca stadium in Mexico City, starting a 39-day tournament that stretches to 19 July and ends at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. It is the first World Cup staged across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and the opening whistle will set 48 teams and 104 matches in motion.
That is why the countdown now has a date, a place and a scale the sport has never seen before. Matches will be spread across 16 cities in three regional clusters, with each team kept to one cluster, while the field expands from 32 teams to 48 and adds a new 1/16 finals round before the knockout stage.
For readers trying to gauge who arrives with the strongest case, Spain sits at the top of the discussion. Opta gave Luis de la Fuente’s team more than a 16% chance to win the tournament, ahead of France at 13%, England at 11.2% and Argentina at 10.4%. Portugal was listed at 7%, Brazil at 6.6%, Germany at 5.1% and the Netherlands at 3.6%.
De la Fuente took over after Spain’s failure at the 2022 World Cup and has already delivered one major title, guiding the side to victory at Euro 2024. Spain also has results to match the reputation: wins over Turkey, Bulgaria and Georgia in qualifying, then victories over Serbia and Peru in friendlies before the tournament.
The bracket is larger, but the field is not cleaner. Poland, Denmark, Wales, Serbia, Cameroon and Nigeria are out, and Italy will miss the World Cup for a third straight time. Ukraine fell 3:1 to Sweden in the playoff matches, while Russia did not enter the qualification cycle because of its suspension from FIFA and UEFA tournaments after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
That mix of power, expansion and absence is what makes this World Cup different before a ball is even kicked. The opening match in Mexico City is the next confirmed step, and once it begins, the first answer fans will want is whether Spain can turn the odds into another trophy.
