Who are the favourites for the 2026 World Cup in the United States? | OneFootball

The World Cup is looming on the horizon for 2026 and the early favourites are Spain, though England are not far behind them having edged ahead of France on the back of a flawless qualification campaign.

South American heavyweights Argentina and Brazil intrude on a Europe-dominated top 10 that Erling Haaland and Norway have now gatecrashed.

Italy sneak in despite having a real job just to avoid another qualification catastrophe.

10) Italy

First and by absolutely no means certain task now is making sure they actually qualify this time after the mortifying failures of 2022 and 2018. They’re going to have to pick a path through the trappy European play-offs to do it, a quick-fire battle next March in which 16 teams will be whittled down to four.

And if they succeed in that, the next challenge is to make it out of the group stage at the finals after the mortifying failures of 2014 and 2010. It remains dizzyingly absurd yet somehow true that the last World Cup knockout game Italy played was the 2006 final.

9) Norway

Have qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1998 on the back of an absolute mountain of Erling Haaland goals. His nonsense steered them to eight wins out of eight in qualification, including home and away thrashings of Italy.

Nobody is going to want to land in a group with these lads.

8) Netherlands

Had to play catch-up in World Cup qualifying as one of the teams to make a late start to proceedings but reeled in Poland impressively enough and qualified with a bit to spare. Their squad is absolutely packed with current and former Premier League talent.

7) Germany

“We’ve got the ambition to keep going. There’s a supercharged atmosphere in the dressing room – they want to win,” said Julian Nagelsmann after a 1-0 mauling of the Netherlands despite a whole host of first-choice players being injured. But they then lost in the Nations League semi-finals to Portugal, struggling without Jamal Musiala.

A slightly weird World Cup qualifying campaign started with a tame defeat to Slovakia but ended with the same opposition being dispatched 6-0. You can, of course, never write off the Germans. Except in the last two World Cups, where they went out in the group stage. You could totally write them off then.

6) Portugal

Ronaldo will be a ludicrous 41 when the World Cup rolls around, but you absolutely know he will be there. They really should have plummeted down this list as soon as they drew 0-0 with Scotland. But beating Germany and then Spain to win the Nations League was impressive, and they’ve qualified safely enough despite a blip in Dublin, with Ronaldo taking his international goal tally to 143 or, more accurately, zero.

5) Argentina

They’re the World Cup holders, the Copa America holders and were so dominant in South American qualifying that they’d already booked their place for next summer months ago, so why are they considered less likely than England to win the 2026 World Cup? ‘Ageing squad’ is really the only compelling answer here.

4) Brazil

Underwhelming at Copa America, unconvincing in World Cup qualifying and it will be 24 years since they have even reached a World Cup final by the time the tournament comes around. And yet it’s Brazil, people bloody love them, and they do have a plethora of young attacking players as well as Carlo Ancelotti to lead them.

3) France

France have reached the last two World Cup finals so are always going to be short odds to reach another, especially with the continuity of Didier Deschamps. And they are in excellent form having topped their Nations League group and then finished in third place with a win over Germany thanks to Kylian Mbappe and Michael Olise.

Sauntered through qualifying and have an absurdly deep and talented squad.

2) England

They reached the Euro 2024 final though it’s still unclear how. Thomas Tuchel has taken over the worst of European finalists and the worst right-wing press. There has been a pretty unedifying Nations League defeat to Greece – with redemption coming in Athens – but England start every major tournament as one of the favourites, despite this particular one marking 60 years of hurt and thus the alarming fact that we are now as far away from the release of Three Lions as Three Lions was from 1966.

And they only beat Andorra 1-0. And then lost to Senegal in, end-of-season-friendly caveats notwithstanding, alarmingly ropey fashion. Then beat Andorra only 2-0 at home. Has any team ever won four qualifiers out of four without conceding a goal while looking quite so bleakly wretched? But the second half of the qualifying campaign was far more convincing than the first as England completed a flawless eight games, eight wins, eight clean sheets record.

It’s nudged them above France with the bookies. Lord help us all.

1) Spain