The draw for the 2022 Men’s World Cup will be held in Doha, Qatar, at 16:00 UTC [19:00 AST] on FRI 01 APR 2022. The 32 participating teams will be allocated to eight groups of four teams each. Placeholders will be used for the three teams that will be decided after the draw.

The teams will be placed in four pots based on the FIFA rankings to be published on THU 31 MAR 2022, one day after the CONCACAF final round and the OFC qualifying tournament conclude. As host nation, Qatar are placed in the first pot and assigned to Group A automatically.

At the time of the draw, 29 of the 32 participating teams will be known. Hence, three placeholder positions will be added to pot 4, one for the winner of the AFC/​CONMEBOL playoff, one for the winner of the CONCACAF/​OFC playoff, and one for the winner of UEFA playoff final A. This last match, to feature the winners of the Wales-Austria and Scotland-Ukraine semifinals, was postponed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

No group may contain more than one team from each confederation, save for UEFA. Since thirteen UEFA teams will qualify, five of the groups will contain two UEFA teams each, and the other three groups will contain one UEFA team each. This constraint will also be used for the placeholder positions as much as possible.

The draw will determine the teams participating in each match per the preliminary schedule that was previously announced. After the draw, FIFA will confirm venues and kickoff times for each match.