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European route to 2023 Women's World Cup to be revealed

European teams will discover the path they must take to the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ on Friday when the UEFA qualifying group stage draw – which will be streamed live on UEFA.com – takes place at the confederation’s headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland at 13:30 CET.

A record 51 teams will be split into nine sections (six groups of six teams, three of five), with the qualifying matches set to be played between September 2021 and September 2022.

Only two European countries have won the FIFA Women’s World Cup thus far. Norway lifted the trophy in 1995, while Germany were back-to-back champions in 2003 and 2007.

With women’s football continuing to develop globally and reach more countries around the world, the draw will also see a number of European teams make their FIFA Women’s World Cup debut, with Cyprus and Luxembourg taking part in a full qualifying stage for the very first time.

The teams are divided into six pots based on the UEFA women’s national team coefficient ranking issued after the conclusion of the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 qualifying group stage.

The pots are as follows:

  • Pot 1: Netherlands, Germany, England, France, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Italy, Denmark
  • Pot 2: Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Scotland, Russia, Finland, Portugal, Wales
  • Pot 3: Czech Republic, Ukraine, Republic of Ireland, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland
  • Pot 4: Slovakia, Hungary, Belarus, Croatia, Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Israel, Azerbaijan
  • Pot 5: Turkey, Malta, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Latvia
  • Pot 6: Montenegro, Lithuania, Estonia, Luxembourg, Armenia, Bulgaria

The winners of the nine qualifying sections will advance directly to the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand.

The group runners-up will take part in UEFA play-offs in October 2022 for the remaining two direct tickets, which will be awarded to the two top-performing play-off winners. The third-best play-off winner will be entered into the inter-confederation play-offs.

A record 10 stadiums across 9 Host Cities in Australia and New Zealand were recently announced by FIFA to host matches at the first ever co-hosted FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, which will also be the first edition of the tournament to feature 32 teams.

More information on how FIFA is working to accelerate the growth and development of women’s football can be found at the following links:

Sourced from FIFA

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