The conmebol confirmed that the South American qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico will begin next September and they will maintain the same format that has prevailed since 1996. They will play all against all in two rounds of nine dates each, but with changes in the number of qualified teams by increasing from 32 to 48 the number of countries that will participate in the final competition. For the next tripartite World Cup, six teams will enter directly from South America and the seventh will participate in a repechage for one more place.
The first two dates will be next September and the Argentine World Champion team will face Ecuador, at home, and Bolivia, as a visitor.. In October gonna home with Paraguay and away with Peru and in November they will play against Uruguay (local) and Brazil (visitor)
Then there will be a very long parenthesis of almost ten months in the dispute of the Qualifiers: In March and June 2024, Conmebol set up two double dates so that those selected can play friendlies and between June 13 and July 14 of that year, a new edition of the Copa América will take place in the United States. The classification will then be played again in September with the matches before Chile (home) and Colombia (away) and in October the first wheel will close before Venezuela (visitor) and start the second with Bolivia (local).
That second wheel will continue to be played in November 2024, March, June and September 2025. In October and November of that year there will again be two windows for new friendlies and in March 2026 the repechages will take place. There will be another window for more friendlies in June 2026 and it will be the last one before the tripartite World Cup that will take place between June 11 and July 19, 2026.
Although it is premature to establish it, It is possible that the Argentine National Team will play some matches in places in the interior of the country again. In this sense, Córdoba, Santiago del Estero, San Juan and Mendoza could receive the world champions.
The Conmebol plenary session was held in an unusual place: Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, in the run-up to the 73rd FIFA Council. The meeting was headed by the head of Conmebol, Alejandro Domínguez, and was attended by Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, and Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, as head of the AFA.