A World Cup of many homelands
For the first time in World Cup history, there will be four sets of brothers playing in this year’s tournament who don’t represent the same countries. Yes, you heard that right: four families, eight players, zero shared jerseys between the brothers: Guéla Doué (Côte d’Ivoire) and Désiré Doué (France), Iñaki Williams (Ghana) and Nico Williams (Spain), John Souttar (Scotland) and Harry Souttar (Australia), Brian Brobbey (Netherlands) and his half-brother Derrick Luckassen (Ghana). It’s a figure that reflects just how global the “global game” has become – one shaped by migration, diaspora communities, and opportunities abroad.
The 2026 World Cup will feature a record number of players representing countries other than the one in which they were born. A total of 289 players fall into that category, nearly a quarter of all players in the tournament. That’s a significant increase from the early 2000s, when foreign-born players accounted for around 10% of World Cup rosters. Only eight teams entering this World Cup are composed exclusively of players born in their own country: Saudi Arabia, Austria, Brazil, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Panama, South Africa, and Sweden.
The rise in foreign-born players reflects a relaxation in FIFA’s eligibility rules in 2021, which allowed players to represent countries other than their birthplace. Players can compete for the country of their birth, that of a parent, or that of a grandparent if they hold the nationality. That’s why, for example, Curaçao can field so many foreign-born players, as our Graphic Truth shows. The Caribbean constituent country of the Netherlands – the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup – has 25 players born in the Netherlands, the highest number of foreign-born players out of any squad in the tournament. The high figure reflects Curaçao’s deep ties to the Netherlands, home to roughly 71,000 people with familial roots on the island.
Migration to Europe and the United States over recent decades has also expanded the talent pool available to many national teams, particularly in Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, draws 20 players from its diaspora in Europe. Morocco, Algeria, Cape Verde, Tunisia, and Senegal, too, all have more European-born players in their 26-man squads than players born at home.
Only one European team ranks among the top ten for foreign-born players: Bosnia and Herzegovina. Migration triggered by the Bosnian War in the 1990s displaced hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom settled elsewhere in Europe. Today, Bosnia’s 16 foreign-born players were born in countries including Germany, Croatia, Sweden, Austria, Serbia, Switzerland, Denmark, Slovenia, and the United States.
Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup, tells a different story. With 13 foreign-born players on its roster, the wealthy but small nation has sought to expand its limited domestic talent pool by attracting top-tier talent from abroad. Qatar has invested heavily in state-of-the-art soccer academies that attract young international talent, some of whom later become naturalized citizens and national team players. Its team consists of players born across three continents, making it one of the most diverse rosters of the tournament.
The record number of foreign-born players at the 2026 World Cup shows how much international soccer has changed. For many players, the path to the World Cup is no longer defined by where they were born but by diasporas and opportunities that span borders.
