The 2026 men’s and women’s World Cup draw will take place on March 17.
The Wagener Stadium will host the draw, which will be broadcast live on watch.hockey (3pm CET).
All the qualified teams will be known with the World Cup qualifiers having been concluded in March.
Nine teams have already qualified for the Women’s World Cup: Belgium and the Netherlands, as hosts of the event, gained direct qualification. Germany and Argentina qualified through the previous two editions of the FIH Hockey Pro League.
The USA secured qualification through the Pan American Cup, Spain qualified via the EuroHockey Championship, New Zealand through the Oceania Cup, China through the Asia Cup, and South Africa via the Africa Cup of Nations.
On the men’s side, the current line-up is as follows: Belgium and the Netherlands, while Australia and Spain qualified through the previous two editions of the FIH Hockey Pro League.
Argentina secured qualification through the Pan American Cup, Germany qualified via the EuroHockey Championship, New Zealand qualified through the Oceania Cup, India qualified through the Asia Cup, and South Africa qualified via the Africa Cup of Nations.
The remaining seven teams per gender will secure their place at the FIH Hockey World Cup 2026 Qualifiers next month.
The Hockey World Cup will be held in Amsterdam and Wavre from Aug 15 to 30.
In 2022, the Netherlands’ women secured their ninth title in 15 editions. Germany men were crowned men’s champions for the third time in 2023.
New format for combined 2026 event
Nations will be divided into four groups of four. After the first group stage, the top two from each group will advance to a second group stage: the winners and runners-up from groups A and D will form the new group E.
The same goes for groups B and C, which will form the new group F. Similar to the numbers one and two, the numbers three and four will also form new groups after the first group stage: groups G and H.
In this second group stage, each country plays two more matches, against the two ‘new’ countries in the group. The result achieved against the country already played in the first group stage also counts towards the final ranking in the new group.
The best two teams from the new groups E and F advance to the semi-finals. The third and fourth-placed teams will play placement matches for rankings 5 to 8. The countries from groups G and H will compete for places 9 to 16.
Both in Wavre and Amsterdam, one semi-final for the men and one for the women will be played.
The women’s final will take place in Amsterdam on Aug 29 and the men’s final in Wavre on Aug 30.
