Oceania Football Confederation: 2026 WC New Opportunities
OFC Guaranteed World Cup Berth For First Time
New Zealand Dominant in OFC
FIFA announced that 48 teams will participate in the 2026 World Cup, expanded from 32. That means new qualification formats for the various confederations. For the Oceania Football Confederation, it means that one of their teams is guaranteed to represent the continent for the first time ever.
Previously, the OFC qualifying champion, often New Zealand, has had the unenviable position of contesting a playoff to qualify for the World Cup. We’ll look at the World Cup history of OFC teams and the change in the qualifying format.
Oceania at the World Cup
The first team from Oceania to qualify for the World Cup was Australia back in 1974. They failed to make it out of the tournament’s first round on their debut, though. In 1982, New Zealand made it to the World Cup but also failed to advance from their group.
No team from the Oceania Football Confederation qualified for the World Cup from 1986 until 2006, when Australia made their second appearance. The Socceroos became the first OFC team to make it out of the group stage as they advanced to the round of 16.
Australia left the OFC for the Asian Football Confederation ahead of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers. Since then, New Zealand have been the dominant force in the OFC. They qualified for the 2010 World Cup by defeating Bahrain in a playoff.
Betting on soccer games in Group F was a wild ride. Somehow, defending champions Italy finished in last place. Meanwhile, New Zealand drew all their matches to become the only unbeaten team in the tournament. Still, they didn’t make it out of the group stage, as Paraguay and Slovakia finished ahead of them.
OFC World Cup Qualifiers
For the 2022 World Cup, only eight teams from the OFC opted to participate in World Cup qualifiers. That meant there was a group stage, with two groups of four teams. However, the Cook Islands and Vanuatu withdrew from qualification. Still, the two top teams from each group advanced to the semifinal round. New Zealand took down Tahiti 1-0 and the Solomon Islands beat Papua New Guinea 3-2.
New Zealand defeated the Solomon Islands 5-0 in the single match final as Bill Tuiloma scored twice. New Zealand advanced to an intercontinental playoff vs. Costa Rica but lost 1-0. The All-Whites have been eliminated at that stage three times in a row.
Now, the top team from OFC qualifiers will advance directly to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. No format has been decided yet, but it is a safe bet that some combination of a group stage and playoff will be used to determine the winner. The second-placed team from the OFC will also represent Oceania at the Intercontinental playoff. This time around, six teams worldwide will be competing for the last two World Cup spots in the intercontinental playoff.
| American Samoa |
| Cook Islands |
| Fiji |
| New Caledonia |
| New Zealand |
| Papua New Guinea |
| Samoa |
| Solomon Islands |
| Tahiti |
| Tonga |
| Vanuatu |
Kiribati and Tuvalu are OFC members but not affiliated with FIFA so will not partake in World Cup qualifying.
