The date of the draw and the qualification system for the 2026 World Cup in the decisive round of the Asian qualifiers

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The curtain came down yesterday, Tuesday, on the final sixth round of the second round of double qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup and the 2027 Asian Cup, as the contract for those qualifying for the decisive third round was completed.

18 teams reserved their qualification ticket to the decisive third round, including nine Arab teams, as follows: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Iran, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Australia, China and Kyrgyzstan.

These 18 teams have also reserved their places in the 2027 Asian Cup in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

- The date of the decisive round draw 

The Asian Football Confederation has set Thursday, June 27, 2024, as the date for the draw for the decisive third round of the World Cup qualifiers for the Asian continent.

The draw will take place in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

- Qualification system

According to the qualifying system, the third stage in which the 18 teams qualifying from the second round are distributed into three groups, each group includes six teams. These teams face each other back and forth from September 2024 until June 2025, with the first two teams guaranteed to qualify directly to the 2026 World Cup, which will witness... 48 teams from different continents of the world participated instead of 32.

The Asian continent enjoyed an increase in its share of qualifying for the expanded World Cup, as it was allocated eight direct seats, with the possibility of increasing it to nine seats in light of the presence of a place in the playoff, which increases the chances of qualifying for the historic first time for many teams.

After the end of the third stage (in which six teams qualified), come the fourth stage qualifiers, which include six teams, which ranked third and fourth in the third round groups, where they are divided into two groups of three teams.

The group competitions of the fourth stage will be held between October and November 2025, with the first-place finishers in the two groups qualifying directly to the World Cup, while the second-place finishers in each group qualify for one elimination match, the winner of which will advance to the continental playoff qualifiers.