Russia 2018 Final Draw takes place on 1 December in Moscow

Procedures and sequence of the draw explained

Only Europe can have more than one team in a section

Following the approval of the draw procedures for the Final Draw for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in September 2017, the confirmation of the pots, and the announcement of the conductors and assistants, the scene is set for all 32 participating member associations to learn their paths to possible glory on 1 December (18:00 local time) in Moscow’s State Kremlin Palace.

As already communicated, the October 2017 edition of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking has been used to allocate all qualified teams to the four pots in descending order, with the best seven teams along with hosts Russia in pot 1.

The draw sequence will start with pot 1 and end with pot 4. Each pot will be completely emptied before moving on to the next. As per the standard procedure, a ball from a team pot will be drawn, followed by a ball from one of the group pots, thus determining the position in which the respective team will play.

Further considerations

In pot 1, Russia will have a red ball and will be pre-assigned the position of A1 as host. The remaining seven teams in pot 1 will automatically be drawn into position 1 of each group (B to H), whereas teams in pots 2, 3 and 4 will be drawn into positions randomly in their groups. FIFA’s general principle is to ensure that no group has more than one team from the same qualification zone drawn into it. This is applicable to all zones except Europe, which is represented by 14 teams. Each group must have at least one but no more than two European teams drawn into it. As such, six out of the eight groups will feature two European teams.

The distribution of the teams into the groups according to the geographic separation principle will be monitored by a system designed to take all parameters into account, which means that groups may be skipped. For example, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay, which are in pot 2, will not be drawn into the same group with Brazil or Argentina, which are in pot one. The same principle will apply to the teams from the other confederations with the exception of UEFA.