World Cup expansion changed the field — but not the quarterfinals

Jared Beilby, USA TODAYWed, Jul 8, 2026·2 min read

With its expansion to 48 teams, the 2026 World Cup was supposed to look different.

Those extra teams — and 40 extra games — have brought plenty of hoopla and shock. Heavyweights Germany and Brazil were sent home early. Lionel Messi and his Argentina side have been rattled twice by African teams. And the Golden Boot race is full of superstars.

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But now that the tournament is down to its final eight, the expanded World Cup looks a lot like the old one.

Six European teams and one South American team are in the quarterfinals. It’s the 19th time in 20 analyzed World Cups that at least seven of the eight quarterfinalists come from those two continents. The only time Europe and South America had less representation was in 2002, when Senegal, South Korea and the United States reached the quarterfinals.

Morocco is the lone standout in 2026 and, as it did in 2022, is the only side representing Africa.

The droughts continue for other regions.

No team from North/Central America and the Caribbean is in the quarterfinals once again; Costa Rica was the last quarterfinal team from that region in 2014. Asia hasn’t been to the quarterfinals since South Korea’s 2002 run.

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Oceania, which sent New Zealand to this year’s World Cup, has never reached the quarterfinals.

It’s not for a lack of opportunities — expansion gave the rest of the world more seats at the tournament, but it has not yet changed who survives deepest into it.

Europe and South America made up less than half of the 2026 field, the first time that happened in World Cup history.

Africa then sent nine teams into the round of 32, up from the five that qualified for the 32-team tournament in 2022. However, two rounds later, only Morocco is left.

Asia qualified a record nine teams for the 2026 tournament but had a forgettable group stage as only Australia and Japan made the round of 32.

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Meanwhile, the three co-hosts, Mexico, Canada and the United States, all reached the round of 16. But then they went a combined 0-3 in that round, sealing the fate for North America.

It’s also worth noting that the lone newcomer to the final eight this year is Norway, a European country led by lethal goal scorer Erling Haaland that hardly feels like a shock quarterfinalist.

So, the World Cup once again had plenty of story threads about upstarts in the early going. Once the business end started, however, Europe and South America showed up — like they always seem to do.

Methodology: Quarterfinalist regional data for 1934-2022 from the Fjelstul World Cup Database. Quarterfinalist regional data for 2026 from FIFA. 1930 and 1982 were excluded from the data due to a lack of a quarterfinal round. The eight-team second group stage in 1974 and 1978 was counted as a quarterfinal in this analysis.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: World Cup expansion changed the field — but not the quarterfinals