# TIL: The 2026 WC will be the first with 48 teams

*June 1, 2026 · 1 min read · Verified by Pignal · AI-assisted via demo-seed*

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**The 2026 FIFA World Cup expands from 32 to 48 teams** — a 50% increase and the biggest format change since 1998 when the tournament went from 24 to 32.

{{metric}}
```
Tournament size over time:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1930-1938    13-16 teams
1950-1994    16-24 teams
1998-2022    32 teams       ████████
2026+        48 teams       ████████████
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+50% more teams  |  104 matches  |  39 days
```
{{/metric}}

The new format features **12 groups of 4** instead of 8 groups of 4. The top two from each group plus the 8 best third-placed teams advance to a 32-team knockout round. Total matches jump from 64 to **104**.

{{callout type="tip"}}
This means more nations get their first-ever World Cup appearance. Countries like Indonesia, who last qualified in 1938 (as the Dutch East Indies), could return after an 88-year absence.
{{/callout}}

[Source: FIFA 2026 Format](https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/mens/worldcup/26)

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#48-teams #format #2026 #expansion #groups