Northern Ireland's potential 2026 World Cup opponents, dates and venues revealed
Northern Ireland have learned their potential 2026 World Cup fate with Canada, Qatar and Switzerland awaiting at the major tournament – but only if Michael O’Neill’s side can navigate their way through a tricky play-off route.
With manager O’Neill in attendance for the draw alongside world football’s elite and US President Donald Trump at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, teams were drawn out for the showpiece event being hosted by America, Canada and Mexico next summer.
Northern Ireland are hoping to play their part and reach the country’s first World Cup in 40 years, but they’ll first need to come through four-time champions Italy in March’s play-off semi-final.
It was confirmed this week the match will be held in Bergamo’s New Balance Arena, which has a capacity of 23,439, on March 26.
Should Northern Ireland achieve what O’Neill claims would be “one of the biggest results in our history”, they’d be on the road once again to either Wales or Bosnia and Herzegovina on March 31 for the final.
If Northern Ireland make it, they’ll be hosts Canada’s opening match at BMO Field in Toronto on June 12.
They would then face Switzerland on June 18 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California before rounding out their group stage with a clash against Qatar on June 24 at Lumen Field, Seattle.
Official confirmation of all dates and venues will come on Saturday, according to FIFA.
The 2026 World Cup will be the first to include 48 teams, but O’Neill knows Northern Ireland have their work cut out to reach that stage.
“It’s a tough draw,” said O’Neill last month on their Italian trip. “We always felt it would be.
“You have to take what you get in this situation. We always knew we were going to be away from home (in the semi-final).
“Italy will be as tough as we can get, but ultimately we have to believe we can go there and get an amazing result. It would be one of the biggest results in our history if we can do that. We have to believe as a young team that we are capable of doing that.
“We gave a good account of ourselves in our World Cup qualifying campaign away from home, albeit the result in Germany went away from us in the last 20 minutes and the game in Slovakia we lost via a corner in injury time.
“I think the team has developed over the six qualifying games and a big thing for us will be to be as strong as possible come March.
“We obviously dealt with injuries and some suspensions in the six games that we had and there’s no doubt that affected us, but hopefully we will be as close to full strength as possible in March.”