football

The draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifiers resulted in placing the Libyan national team in Group D alongside Cameroon, Cape Verde, Angola, Eswatini and Mauritius.

The draw took place in the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, on the sidelines of the Ordinary General Assembly of the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

The Libyan national team came in the fourth ranking at the level of the African continent teams, after CAF adopted the latest classification issued by FIFA.

The draw saw the distribution of the fifty-four African teams into nine groups, with six teams in each group. The competition in each group will be conducted in a two-stage league system, so that the nine top teams will eventually qualify for the 2026 World Cup directly.

Ten African teams are scheduled to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, after increasing the number of teams in the new tournament system, which will include 48 teams instead of 32 like what happened in Qatar 2022 World Cup.

Four teams of the best second place in all groups will qualify for the playoffs for an additional team to enter the global playoffs. The first and second rounds of the qualifiers will start from 13 to 21 November 2023, and the third and fourth rounds from 3 to 11 June 2024.