2018 FIFA World Cup qualification (UEFA)

Branding

UEFA unveiled the branding for the qualifiers on 15 April 2013. It shows a national jersey inside a heart, and represents Europe, honour and ambition. The same branding was also used for the European qualifiers for the UEFA Euro 2016.

Format

The qualification structure is as follows:

With the admission of Gibraltar and Kosovo as FIFA members in May 2016, both national teams were eligible to make their debuts in World Cup qualifying. With two groups of only five teams in the first round, Kosovo was assigned to Group I as it was decided that Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia should not play against Kosovo for security reasons, and Gibraltar was then added to Group H.

Entrants

Apart from Russia, which qualified automatically as hosts, all remaining 52 FIFA-affiliated national teams from UEFA at the registration deadline of January 2015 entered qualification.

Gibraltar, despite being a UEFA member since 2013, was not a FIFA member at the time of the registration deadline, and thus was not eligible to enter qualification for the FIFA World Cup. They appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to challenge FIFA's refusal to grant membership in order to enter World Cup qualifying. In May 2016, the CAS found in Gibraltar's favour and ordered that FIFA put Gibraltar forward for FIFA membership, which would permit Gibraltar to take part in the qualifiers if membership was granted.

Kosovo became a UEFA member on 3 May 2016, and together with Gibraltar, applied for membership in the FIFA Congress in 12–13 May 2016. FIFA confirmed that in the case both associations succeeded in becoming a member, they would be entitled to participate in the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, with UEFA tasked to integrate them into the competition.

On 13 May 2016, both Kosovo and Gibraltar were officially admitted as FIFA members, thus allowing them to compete. UEFA created a task force to discuss how to integrate the two teams into the competition, and on 9 June 2016 UEFA announced that Kosovo will be assigned to Group I, to avoid meeting Bosnia and Herzegovina for security reasons, and Gibraltar will play in Group H.

Schedule

Qualifying matches will start in September 2016, following UEFA Euro 2016, and finish in November 2017.

The scheduling of qualifying matches, which will be centralized by UEFA, will follow the "Week of Football" concept first used for UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying:

The fixture list was confirmed by UEFA on 26 July 2015, the day following the draw.

Additionally, the hosts Russia, while having already qualified automatically, were to be partnered with a five-team Group H, which would have enabled them to play friendlies against these countries on their spare dates (these friendlies would not have counted in the qualifying group standings). However, with the admission of Kosovo and Gibraltar, all groups were filled to contain six teams and the Russia friendlies against Group H teams were cancelled. UEFA vice-president Hryhoriy Surkis said that the UEFA management will be dealing with the issue of finding opponents for Russia to play friendlies.

Seeding

The draw for the first round (group stage) was held as part of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Preliminary Draw on 25 July 2015, starting 18:00 MSK (UTC+3), at the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The seeding was based on the FIFA World Rankings of July 2015. The 52 teams were seeded into six pots:

Each six-team group contains one team from each of the six pots, while each five-team group contains one team from each of the first five pots.

Due to the centralisation of media rights for European qualifiers, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands were all drawn into six-team groups. Netherlands and France were drawn together in Group A, and Spain and Italy were drawn together in Group G.

In consideration of the delicate political situations of the relationships between Armenia and Azerbaijan, UEFA requested that FIFA maintain the current UEFA policy not to draw these teams into the same qualification groups (since the two teams were in the same seeding pot, this did not happen regardless of the request).

Teams were allocated to seeding pots as follows (July 2015 FIFA Rankings shown in brackets).

FIFA recognised the football nations of Gibraltar and Kosovo after the draw, and on 9 June 2016 it was decided Gibraltar would join Group H, and Kosovo would join group I. In addition, it was decided that Kosovo would not play against Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia for security reasons.

Ranking of second-placed teams

At the time of the draw, groups H and I had one team fewer than the other groups so it was announced that matches against the last-placed team in each of the six-team groups would not be included in the ranking of the second-placed teams. UEFA has confirmed that, even after the admission of Kosovo and Gibraltar and with all groups now containing six teams, this regulation has not changed and matches against the teams sixth in all groups will still be discarded. As a result, only eight matches played by each team will be counted in the second-placed table.

The eight best runners-up are determined by the following parameters, in this order:

1. Highest number of points
2. Goal difference
3. Highest number of goals scored

Second round

The draw for the second round (play-offs) will be held in October 2017, after the first round (group stage) is completed. The first legs will be played on 9–11 November, and the second legs will be played on 12–14 November 2017. The winner of each tie will qualify for the World Cup.

Goalscorers

There have been 332 goals scored in 108 matches, for an average of 3.07 goals per match.