During last week’s draw, world football’s governing body showed a map of countries that cannot be drawn to face each other for geopolitical reasons, such as Spain and Gibraltar, Kosovo versus either Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia, and Ukraine and Belarus.
FIFA has apologised for displaying a map during the qualifying draw for the 2026 World Cup that excluded Crimea from Ukraine’s territory, which Kyiv had criticised as an “unacceptable error”.
The map highlighted Ukraine but did not include the Crimea peninsula as part of the country.
Russia occupied and unilaterally annexed Crimea from Ukraine during its initial invasion in 2014. Most of the world condemned the move, and it is still internationally recognised as Ukrainian territory.
Moscow used Crimea to help launch its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has since declared unilateral annexation of four other Ukrainian regions — although Russia does not fully control them. These claims have also been denounced as illegal by the international community.
After the 2026 World Cup qualifying draw on Friday, Ukraine foreign ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said that the country expected “a public apology”, while the Ukrainian Football Association (UFA) wrote to FIFA to complain about the “unacceptable error”.
In response, FIFA said it had removed the map and was conducting an internal review.
“We fully understand the delicate sensitivity of this nature and while the incident was unintentional, we sincerely regret any concern it may have caused,” it wrote in a letter to the UFA.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview last month that Crimea would have to be restored to Ukraine through diplomacy rather than military means because his country could not afford to lose “tens of thousands of our people”.
Zelenskyy again rejected the idea of ceding any territory to Moscow during the interview with Fox News, emphasising that Ukraine “cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian”. There are concerns that the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump may ask Kyiv to give up some of its land as part of a peace deal.
The 2026 World Cup is set to take place across the US, Canada, and Mexico from 11 June to 19 July that year. Ukraine is in qualifying Group D, with Iceland, Azerbaijan, and the winners of the France vs Croatia quarter-final in the Nations League.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview last month that Crimea would have to be restored to Ukraine through diplomacy..how would that happen