Thursday 5th June 2025
Australia v Japan	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	12:10	OneFootball
Indonesia v China	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	14:45	OneFootball
Oman v Jordan	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	OneFootball
United Arab Emirates v Uzbekistan	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	OneFootball
Bahrain v Saudi Arabia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	OneFootball
Iraq v South Korea	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:15	OneFootball
Kuwait v Palestine	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:15	OneFootball
North Korea v Kyrgyzstan	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:15	OneFootball
Qatar v Iran	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:15	OneFootball
Friday 6th June 2025
Ecuador v Brazil	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	00:00	Premier Sports 1
Czech Republic v Montenegro	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Estonia v Israel	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Gibraltar v Croatia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
North Macedonia v Belgium	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Norway v Italy	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Wales v Liechtenstein	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	BBC One Wales / BBC Three / S4C / BBC iPlayer / S4C Online / BBC Sport Website
Saturday 7th June 2025
Bosnia-Herzegovina v San Marino	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	14:00	TBC
Andorra v England	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	ITV1 / STV / ITVX / STV Player
Malta v Lithuania	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	TBC
Albania v Serbia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Austria v Romania	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Finland v Netherlands	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Monday 9th June 2025
Kazakhstan v North Macedonia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	15:00	TBC
Belgium v Wales	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	BBC One Wales / S4C / BBC iPlayer / S4C Online / BBC Sport Website
Croatia v Czech Republic	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Estonia v Norway	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Faroe Islands v Gibraltar	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Italy v Moldova	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Tuesday 10th June 2025
Japan v Indonesia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	11:35	OneFootball
South Korea v Kuwait	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	12:00	OneFootball
China v Bahrain	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	12:00	OneFootball
Kyrgyzstan v United Arab Emirates	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	14:45	OneFootball
Uzbekistan v Qatar	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	14:45	OneFootball
Iran v North Korea	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	OneFootball
Jordan v Iraq	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:15	OneFootball
Palestine v Oman	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:15	OneFootball
Saudi Arabia v Australia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:15	OneFootball
Finland v Poland	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Latvia v Albania	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Netherlands v Malta	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Romania v Cyprus	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
San Marino v Austria	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Serbia v Andorra	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Wednesday 11th June 2025
Argentina v Colombia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	01:00	Premier Sports 1
Brazil v Paraguay	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	01:45	Premier Sports 2
Thursday 4th September 2025
Kazakhstan v Wales	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	15:00	BBC One Wales / S4C / BBC iPlayer / S4C Online / BBC Sport Website
Georgia v Turkey	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	TBC
Lithuania v Malta	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	17:00	TBC
Bulgaria v Spain	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Liechtenstein v Belgium	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Luxembourg v Northern Ireland	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	BBC One NI / BBC iPlayer / BBC Sport Website
Netherlands v Poland	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Slovakia v Germany	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Friday 5th September 2025
Denmark v Scotland	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	BBC One Scotland / BBC iPlayer / BBC Sport Website
Faroe Islands v Croatia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Greece v Belarus	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Iceland v Azerbaijan	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Italy v Estonia	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Moldova v Israel	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC
Montenegro v Czech Republic	FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier	19:45	TBC

 

The FIFA World Cup Tournament

The FIFA World Cup is the ultimate competition for international football teams. Founded in 1930, the competition runs every four years and the destination of each tournament is predetermined by a bidding campaign where countries vie for the honour and privilege to hold it.

Qualification for the final tournament is through each of the six FIFA continental zones Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe and see’s the teams from these areas compete in groups to make the cut.

The World Cup Finals, as the tournament itself is known, features the 32 nations that qualified from their respective continental zones. Teams are split into 8 groups of 4 where each team plays each other once. On completion of the group stages the top two from each group then go on to the last 16 knockout phase. From there we progress to the quarter finals, the semi finals and then the final itself.

It has been announced that the 2026 World Cup will have 48 teams playing in 16 groups of three before progressing to a knockout stage featuring 32 teams.

Broadcasting

With a total audience of 26.29 billion worldwide viewers for the 2006 finals, The World Cup is one of the biggest sporting events in the world and broadcasting distribution is shared by many companies who try to ensure their unique take on events pleases their viewers.

Because of this reach it is a huge opportunity for sponsorship deals with giants like Adidas, McDonalds and Coca Cola tending to feature.

Winners

For the first 40 years of the tournament the winners got the Jules Rimet trophy but after Brazil won their third tournament in 1970 they were awarded the trophy with a new World Cup being designed. Weighing 13.6lb, the trophy is 75% 18 carat gold.

In the 20 World Cups to date only eight different nations have won the trophy with Brazil winning the most amount of times at five. Both Italy and Germany have won the title 4 times and Uruguay, Argentina, Spain, England and France have also won the World Cup.

The following shows the years that the trophy was held and who won;

1930

Uruguay

1934

Italy

1938

Italy

1950

Uruguay

1954

West Germany

1958

Brazil

1962

Brazil

1966

England

1970

Brazil

1974

West Germany

1978

Argentina

1982

Italy

1986

Argentina

1990

West Germany

1994

Brazil

1998

France

2002

Brazil

2006

Italy

2010

Spain

2014

Germany

Player Records

As you can imagine there are a number of important player records held during the history of the FIFA World Cup.

The most World Cup games played by any one player is held by Lothar Matthaus who has competed in 25 matches for Germany (and West Germany) from 1982 through to 1998. The player to have won the most World Cups is arguably the greatest footballer of all time, Pele. Pele won the World Cup with Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970.

Pele also holds the record for the youngest player to play in the final when he was just 17years and 249 days when Brazil beat Sweden in 1958 (he also holds the records for the youngest goal scorer, youngest hat-trick scorer and youngest final scorer) . The Youngest player to have played in the tournament was Norman Whiteside who played for Northern Ireland at the age of 17 years and 41 days. The oldest player to have played at the World Cup was Colombia’s Faryd Mondragon who played in goal against Japan at the age of 43years and 3 days. Dino Zoff, the Italian goal keeper, holds the record for the oldest player in a final at 40 years and 133 days.

The overall leading goal scorer for the World Cup is the German leading scorer, Miroslav Klose. Klose scored 16 goals in 4 tournaments from 2002 to 2014. The most scored in any one tournament is held by the French striker Just Fontaine who scored 13 in 1958.

The most goals scored in any one match is held by former Rangers striker Oleg Salenko who netted five times against Cameroon in 1994. Honourable mention must go out to Australia’s Archie Thompson who scored an incredible 13 goals in the 2002 Oceanic qualifier against American Samoa.