The Oceania Football Confederation’s (OFC) 11 members will learn their potential path to becoming one of the 48 teams at the most inclusive FIFA World Cup ever during the preliminary qualifying draw set for Thursday, 18 July 2024.
Christian Karembeu, France’s FIFA World Cup 98 winner and a FIFA Legend born in New Caledonia, will join Dame Sarai Bareman, FIFA’s Chief Women’s Football Officer, to assist with the draw. The event will take place at the Home of FIFA in Zurich, Switzerland, at 9am CEST (7am GMT/7pm NZST).
According to the FIFA/Coca-Cola Men’s World Ranking of July 2024, the four lowest-ranked teams—Samoa, Cook Islands, American Samoa, and Tonga—will compete in a knockout-match format in September 2024. The winner will join the seven highest-ranked sides in the second round.
The draw will divide these eight teams into three pots, and they will be placed into two groups of four. The draw process will begin with Pot 3 and proceed to Pot 1.
Each country will play against every team in their group once, in matches scheduled for October and November 2024. The top two teams from each group will advance to the third round.
In March 2025, semi-final matches will be held with Group A winners facing Group B runners-up and Group B winners facing Group A runners-up. The winners of these matches will compete for the first-ever guaranteed World Cup spot for an OFC nation.
All matches of the OFC qualification phase for the FIFA World Cup 2026 will be broadcast worldwide on FIFA+ starting in September 2024.
The runner-up of the final match will advance to the FIFA Intercontinental Play-off Tournament, where a victory could secure Oceania a second historic FIFA World Cup representative in 2026, hosted in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
Pot allocations for the second preliminary round draw:
Pot 1: New Zealand, Solomon Islands
Pot 2: Fiji, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Vanuatu
Pot 3: Papua New Guinea, Winner of round one