In Monday's announcement, the Asian Football Confederation unveiled a new format for the 2026 FIFA World Cup's qualifying rounds, which will see the World Cup final week's field expand to 48 teams, increasing Asia's quota to 8.5, a whopping increase of four seats compared to the current edition's 4.5. Such changes to the
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What are the challenges?
The new tournament system has been divided into three stages. In the first stage, 22 teams ranked 26 to 47 in Asia will compete for 11 qualifying spots, with the top teams advancing to the second stage.
A total of 36 teams will compete in the second stage, including the top 25 Asian ranked teams and the 11 teams that advanced from the first stage. They will be divided into nine groups to play a double round-robin tournament, with the top two teams from each group advancing to the Round of 18, as well as qualifying for the final week of the 2027 Asian Cup.
The third stage, the Round of 18, has six more seats than this year's Round of 12, and the 18 teams will be divided into three groups of six teams each, with the top two teams in the group advancing to the final week of the World Cup.
The third and fourth place finishers of the 18-team tournament, a total of six teams, will enter the play-offs. These six teams will be divided into two groups of three teams each to play a single round-robin tournament, with the top of the group advancing directly to the World Cup finals week, while the second-place finisher of the group will play a single play-off match, with the winners battling it out again in the intercontinental play-offs to qualify for the tournament.
With a long and difficult journey to the out-of-conference tournament, domestic fans have been focusing on China's chances of making it out of the tournament. Some media outlets have pointed out that
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The chances of winning against the top Asian teams are not high, and with real opponents likely to be Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Vietnam, victory still seems difficult, and the chances of getting out of the tournament still seem slim.
