The draw for the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup will take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday.
“It’s the biggest, probably the biggest event in sports, I guess,” said Trump, who made the announcement in an Oval Office event where he was joined by FIFA president Gianni Infantino and Vice President JD Vance.
The 2026 event will be hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19 and will be the first World Cup hosted by three nations and also the first with the expansion to 48 teams.
Sixteen venues have already been chosen to host games, with 11 in the U.S., three in Mexico and two in Canada.
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The draw, which Infantino said will take place at noon ET, will see the 48 qualified teams split into 12 groups of four teams. The top two teams from each group plus the eight best third-placed teams will advance to the knockout stage.
Infantino said the 48 teams will play “104 matches in one month” and likened it to “104 Super Bowls.” Trump picked up on that theme, saying, “It’s like having many Super Bowls in a short period of time, because each one of these games, essentially, is a Super Bowl. Some of them are bigger than Super Bowls, actually.”
He said that the Kennedy Center “will give a phenomenal kickoff, and we’ll be involved.” Asked whether he will be the one actually drawing the team names, Trump didn’t answer directly but deferred to Infantino, saying the FIFA chief “was the boss.”
Infantino said, “It’s a very interesting proposal,” and he indicated that he and Trump will discuss the matter further.
The choice of venue is interesting because Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center, installing himself as chair and replacing the board of trustees with loyalists. He has also hinted that he would like to see the venue renamed the Trump/Kennedy Center.
ESPN reported last month that Las Vegas will host the Dec. 5 draw.
The event is traditionally a mix of entertainment and the business of dividing the teams into 12 groups of four for the opening stage of the tournament. When the United States held the World Cup in 1994, the draw was held at the Las Vegas Convention Center and Stevie Wonder was among the performers.
When the draw is held in December, 42 of the 48 teams will be known, including the automatic berths given to the United States, Mexico and Canada as hosts. The remaining six teams will be determined by playoffs in March.
The World Cup kicks off June 11 at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City and runs through the final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Games will be played in 16 cities across the three countries. Washington, D.C., is not among the host cities.
The president also used Friday’s FIFA announcement to talk about his deploying the National Guard and federalizing Washington’s police force.
“So now, when we have this beautiful event in December, it’s going to be very safe,” Trump said. He added that the FIFA chief “can walk down the street with your beautiful wife. You can take her to dinner, if you can get a reservation.”
Asked about fans overseas obtaining U.S. visas to come watch their teams in the World Cup, Trump at first said the process would be a smooth one, but then added, “Certain countries are going to be very, very easy, and other countries are going to be obviously a little bit more difficult.”
As well as the three host nations, 10 teams have already secured their place at the 2026 tournament: Japan, New Zealand, Iran, Argentina, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Jordan, Australia, Brazil and Ecuador.
FIFA also confirmed Friday that a new playoff tournament, which will feature six nations from five of the six confederations compete for the final two places at the World Cup, will be hosted in North America in March next year.
Following the draw announcement, Infantino presented Trump with a ticket to next year’s World Cup final, which the FIFA president said was the first ticket available for the upcoming tournament.
Applications for tickets for the 2026 World Cup open Sept. 10. FIFA said that due to anticipated high demand, tickets will be released in phases.
In an unusual move, Infantino also brought the World Cup trophy with him to the Oval Office.
It’s a superstition nearly as old as the World Cup itself: Players on national teams around the globe believe that touching the trophy before their team actually wins the tournament on the field can spark bad luck.
Even Infantino noted that the trophy is “for winners only,” but then he added to Trump, “And, since you are a winner, of course you can as well.”
The president did just that, remarking, “It’s pretty heavy.”
He later called the trophy “a beautiful piece of gold” and joked about keeping it and displaying it in the Oval Office.
“It fits very well right on the wall over there,” Trump said.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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