Ranking the 88 national teams that could win the 2026 World Cup

It’s the quadrennial question. What’s more important for a national team: talent or form?

With the third-to-last international break before the FIFA World Cup upon us, I have some good news: we actually don’t need to answer that question. Instead, we’re going to operate from an alternative premise: What if talent and form are both really important? At least, that’s the idea behind the rankings you’re about to read through.

We want to get a sense of where every national team stands ahead of next summer, so we’ve looked at every country that still hasn’t been eliminated from World Cup contention, and then ranked them by equal parts performance and results.

As a proxy for talent, this ranking uses the average, estimated transfer value of each player on each team’s most recent roster from the site Transfermarkt. And for results, we’ll use the World Football Elo Ratings — a system that awards or subtracts points every time a team plays a game, based on the final scoreline, the location of the match, the quality of the opponent, and the competitiveness of the match. Then we’ve normalized those numbers to make them equivalent, added them up, and produced what you see below.

There are 88 teams still in contention to compete in the 2026 World Cup, so let’s get to ESPN’s World Cup field rankings:

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It’s not only the addition of 16 more teams that’s made World Cup qualifying even more convoluted — it’s the existence of the Nations League, which gives some teams multiple paths to qualification, depending on the federation.

For example, Moldova have lost all five of their qualifying matches. They’ve scored three goals and conceded 25. Yet, somehow, they could still sneak into the UEFA qualification playoff.

The market value of Benin’s entire roster is 14.28 million. There are 15 different Nigerian players with higher market values — by themselves.

Despite that, the two countries have something close to a win-and-you’re-in match in Nigeria to wrap up the current stage of qualifying.

And there you have it: Our first qualified team for the 2026 World Cup!

The estimated market value of Wolverhampton midfielder Jean-Ricner Bellegarde is more than the entire squads for 19 countries behind Haiti on this list.

It’s their first time qualifying for a World Cup, which is the sort of thing that can happen when expanding the tournament from 32 teams to 48, as will be the case next summer.

While Jordan doesn’t have a particularly talented squad beyond Rennes winger Mousa Tamari, you can’t qualify for the World Cup as a non-host unless you win a bunch of games. So, Jordan have a significantly higher Elo rating than all of the teams behind them on this list.

How much is Bolivia’s home-field advantage at 13,615 feet above sea level worth? They have the 90th-most-valuable squad on this list.

Among teams ranked in the top 50, Iran have the biggest positive gap between the value of their squad and team performance.

Mehdi Taremi is one of the only four players, across all confederations, with at least 10 goals in qualifying. He is 33 years old and left Inter Milan for Olympiacos on a 2 million transfer this past summer.

There are 21 countries, including Paraguay, with an Elo rating of 18400 or better. The average market value of the players on those teams is 22 million. The average market value of Paraguay’s current players: 3.6 million.

For all of the consternation around El Tri every year, Mexico are tied for 19th in the Elo ratings, and based on the current rosters, they have the 35th-most-valuable squad in the world. Perhaps there are deeper player development issues here, but there’s no real argument that this team hasn’t been performing at its true talent level.

That could all change pretty quickly, of course. Gilberto Mora has been starting for Tijuana since he was 15, and he doesn’t turn 17 until later this month. He plays approximately zero defense, but he’s already a quality possession player in a good professional soccer league. He’s also one of the most promising young players on the planet.

They would be higher with a full roster — both Chelsea’s Moisés Caicedo and Arsenal’s Piero Hincapié missed call-ups because of injuries — but this is still a team significantly outperforming its talent level.

Ecuador currently rank 9th in the Elo ratings. And over the past year, they’ve improved their rating by a larger degree than all but one other team inside the top 20.

The U.S. men’s national team ranks 19th in estimated player value — and 40th in the Elo ratings. Put another way: The USMNT has a roster of comparable quality to Croatia, and yet it is performing like Hungary.

Now, as you start to dream about an efficiently managed American team reaching the semifinals in back-to-back World Cups like Croatia did, it’s important to remember that we’re talking about Croatia right now. Not the one that had Luka Modric playing like a literal Ballon d’Or winner and a number of other stars playing significant minutes for the best teams in the world.

Looking at the market values of these teams is instructive, though. For structural reasons, there are basically eight countries that are going to have more talent than everyone else, at most World Cups. There are the two South American giants (Brazil and Argentina) and the six European powers: France, Spain, England, Portugal, Germany and the Netherlands. We can also throw Italy into that mix if they ever start qualifying for World Cups again.

Argentina have the least valuable squad of those top nine, and their team is still more than twice as valuable as what we can assume is among the most valuable American teams ever assembled. By pure value, the gap between Argentina and the USMNT is bigger than the gap between the USMNT and Moldova.

In other words: It doesn’t take a ton of improvement to go from the 70th-best team in the world to the 20th-best team in the world. But to get from 20th to the top 10? It’s a massive leap that we haven’t really seen anyone be able to sustain.

They were third in the Elo ratings a year ago, and they’re sixth today. The question for Colombia ahead of next summer, then: Will the slide continue?

Among the top 30 teams, only Paraguay have an older current squad. Plus, this team only has one true star in Luis Díaz. No one else on the roster plays for a Champions League-qualified squad in a Big Five league. Beyond Diaz, they’re especially reliant on the health and consistency of James Rodríguez, who is 34 years old and currently plays in Liga MX.

For most of their history, Colombia have been worse than the sum of their parts. The current iteration the exact opposite, but to what degree? Although the results have been there, it’s hard to look at this roster and see this as the sixth-best team in the world.

This is the anti-Colombia: they’re 39th in the Elo ratings but have the 12th-most-valuable squad in the world. Part of that discrepancy comes from the randomness of player development and the arbitrariness of national borders.

Sweden’s two best players, Liverpool’s Alexander Isak and Arsenal’s Viktor Gyökeres, play the same position. It’s not to say they can’t play together, but they don’t complement each other in the same way that the top two at another Scandinavian nation do.

With just one point through the first three qualifying matches, it’s looking likely they’ll be one of the most talented teams watching from the couch next summer.

It seems like it’s finally happening. After giving Israel a 90-minute-long noogie and winning 5-0 despite Erling Haaland missing two penalties, Norway have a plus-26 goal differential in qualifying through six matches. Barring a sudden collapse, they’re going to their first World Cup since 1998.

There won’t be a better one-two combination than Haaland and Martin Ødegaard next summer, either. The former rarely touches the ball and just constantly threatens the defense with runs in behind, while the former might be the best high-volume attacking passer in the world. Put more simply: There’s no one better than the Arsenal captain at playing through balls, and there’s no one better than the Manchester City forward at running through on goal.

The haphazard structure of international soccer favors simplicity, and things have just happened to work out that Norway’s two superstars fit that perfectly. They’re lucky they don’t have two star goalkeepers you can’t play at the same time or a game-breaking creative-passing right back who requires some tactical creativity to get the most out of.

As long as they can get some solidity around Ødegaard and Haaland, this team should be able to beat anyone next summer.

Given how random international tournaments are — and qualifying, too, to a lesser extent — it makes sense to buy low (theoretically) on the super-talented sides that haven’t yet produced results. Enter: Germany under Julian Nagelsmann.

They took Spain to the brink in the knockout round at the Euros in the summer of 2024, but it’s been all downhill ever since then. They’ve fallen eight spots in the Elo ratings since last year and now sit 15th between Switzerland and Norway. Their qualification hopes even looked at risk at one point, but they’re back in first in their group and should be favorites to advance.

The big question is whether or not Jamal Musiala (1) comes back from his ankle injury in time for the World Cup, and (2) how quickly he can get up to speed if he does. The team we saw at the Euros played well enough to win that tournament (and the upcoming World Cup), but it’s hard to see them getting back to that level without Musiala.

There are Italians who are old enough to legally drink a glass of wine but have never seen Italy get out of the group stage at the World Cup.

The last time it happened was in 2006, when they … won the World Cup. And with Italy well behind Norway on points and in a different universe on goal differential in their qualifying group, there’s a very real chance that they miss their third-straight World Cup, too.

By building a team around a 38-year-old guy playing in MLS and some of his best friends, Argentina can only rate so highly in an exercise that accounts for estimated transfer values. Yes, Lionel Messi may be the greatest player to ever do it, but re-read the previous sentence.

The Elo ratings have Argentina in second, and how could they not be? They’ve won the past three major tournaments they’ve contested and they finished atop the CONMEBOL qualifying table. But their rating has dipped a bit, and it’s now closer to Portugal in fourth than it is to Spain in first.

Messi is still absurdly good in MLS. Some player-value metrics, like G+ at American Soccer Analysis, rate him as twice as good as the second-best player in the league. There’s no doubt he can still contribute to a top team at the international level. But when you’re 38, a year is a really long time.

This team would be awesome if you could just build an entire starting 11 out of only forwards, goalkeepers and center backs. With AC Milan, manager Carlo Ancelotti figured out a way to cram five central midfielders onto the field at the same time and win the Champions League.

He’ll have to think up something similarly lopsided if he wants to get all of Brazil’s best players onto the field next summer.

Thanks to their demotion in the Nations League before he arrived, we haven’t seen England under Thomas Tuchel play any competitive games against any of the top teams in Europe. I don’t suspect it will be any more exciting than it was under Gareth Southgate, but I doubt we’ll see anything as ill-conceived as the what if “Trent Alexander-Arnold is an 8” experiment at the Euros. In fact, as of now, I’m not sure we’ll even see Trent Alexander-Arnold as anything next summer.

Much like with Mauricio Pochettino and the USMNT, we still have no idea what Tuchel thinks is England’s best starting lineup.

Everyone knows how good this team is. They’re first in the Elo ratings. They were first at this time last year, and their rating has gone up since.

Just to give you a sense of where they’re at, even without a fully functioning Rodri: Turkey are 14th on this list, and they lost to Spain, 5-0. The game was in Turkey, there were no red cards, and Spain didn’t score a goal in the final 30 minutes of the match.

France’s front three at the next World Cup will presumably be a combination of Kylian Mbappé, Michael Olise and Ousmane Dembélé. Per Transfermarkt, their average market value is 127 million. Only three players in the history of world soccer have ever moved for that much money.

Their backup forwards will likely come from Liverpool, PSG, Inter Milan, PSG and Manchester City. A starting center back from either Arsenal, Bayern Munich, or Liverpool will be on the bench next summer.

France won the 2018 World Cup, they lost the 2022 World Cup final in a shootout, and the players they take to the 2026 World Cup might have more talent than either of those teams.