As hosts, Germany automatically qualifies for EURO 2024. A comfortable situation – but one that can also have negative consequences for qualification for the 2026 World Cup.
Around a year ago, Germany was in 11th place in the FIFA world rankings, but the team has now slipped to 16th place. There are several reasons for this:
The team played a disappointing World Cup with only four points and the associated elimination in the preliminary round. As an automatically qualified host, Germany will not play in the qualification for EURO 2024, but competitive games in the qualification bring more points in the world rankings than friendly games. Germany can currently only play test matches and has recently had weak results there too – such as the defeats against Turkey, Belgium, Poland, Colombia and Japan.
National team captain İlkay Gündoğan – the road to the 2026 World Cup could be tricky.
FIFA: Seedings must be based on the world rankings
As usual, FIFA has stipulated in its regulations for qualification for the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada that the FIFA world rankings must generally be used for every seeding list in the qualifying competitions. This in turn means that Germany could slip into a worse draw due to its increasingly weak position in the world rankings.
Germany is currently 16th in the overall rankings and is still the tenth best team among the 55 UEFA members. If there are five draw pots with eleven teams each for the World Cup qualification, only the eleven best in Europe will be in pot 1. If the downward trend continues, Germany could face an opponent from the category of, for example, France, England or Belgium. Most recently, Switzerland and Croatia overtook Germany, and Denmark and Ukraine are currently right behind the DFB selection.
UEFA: Smaller groups in qualifying for the 2026 World Cup
And the format of the qualification will change significantly. Since FIFA is expanding the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams, UEFA will now have 16 places instead of the previous 13. UEFA decided in January that qualifying would no longer be played in ten groups of five or six teams as before. Instead, the teams should be divided into twelve groups of four or five teams.
The result: Only the twelve group winners travel safely to the 2026 World Cup. The twelve runners-up in the group have to play with four teams from the Nations League in four playoff tournaments for the last four European places at the World Cup. A path in which a defeat can trigger a sporting disaster – Germany has never failed to qualify for the World Cup. The playoffs are easier to avoid with a good position in the world rankings – and that requires good performances at EURO 2024.
Number of World Cup participants since 1930 Year Teams 1930 13 1934 16 1938 15 1950 13 1954 16 1958 16 1962 16 1966 16 1970 16 1974 16 1978 16 1982 24 1986 24 199 0 24 1994 24 1998 32 2002 32 2006 32 2010 32 2014 32 2018 32 2022 32 2026 48
