UEFA have confirmed England’s list of potential opponents for the first round of 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup Qualifying Play-Offs.
England finished as League A3 runner-up despite a 3-0 win over Ukraine and missed out on automatic qualification after Spain defeated Iceland 6-1 in Reykjavik to top their group, with the Lionesses having sat top after the opening four matchdays until they lost 4-0 against Spain in their penultimate match in Mallorca.
Sarina Wiegman’s Lionesses now will enter the play-offs as a seeded team in Path One of Round One, which means that they avoid a match-up against a fellow marquee European team after Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden also found themselves seeded in the Play-Offs.
England will also avoid Republic of Ireland who are also seeded, with UEFA having determined that the second and third-placed teams of League A will be drawn against the League C winners and two best second-placed runner-ups.
This means that England will face one of; Hungary, Greece, Romania, Belarus, Kosovo, Lithuania, Croatia or Kazakhstan in the first play-off round, which is scheduled for between 7-13 October across two legs with the seeded teams away in the first leg then at home in the second leg.
The first-round winners from Path One will then be seeded for the two-legged second round between 26 November – 5 December, with the first leg again played away then the second leg played at home.
Should England indeed qualify for that stage then they could well face a home nations tie against one of Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales if any or all of the latter trio also advance to that stage.
The eight second-round winners will then be ranked on their overall league ranking, with the top seven countries advancing to the Women’s World Cup in Brazil next summer, whilst the lowest-ranked country must enter the inter-confederations play-offs.
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