The 2026 World Cup draw will be held at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC

The draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup will take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on December 5th, 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. 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.”

Infantino said, “It’s a very interesting proposal,” and he indicated that he and Trump would discuss the matter further. FIFA also confirmed Friday that a new playoff tournament, which will see 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 President 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.

Infantino also brought the World Cup trophy with him to the Oval Office. He 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.”