Curacao, the smallest country and fourth debutant at the 2026 Mundial
Curacao, a speck of land in the southern Caribbean, has rewritten football history. With a population barely above 150,000 and a land area smaller than the Isle of Man, the island nation has become the smallest country ever to qualify for a World Cup after grinding out a decisive goalless draw against Jamaica in Kingston.
The achievement dethrones Iceland’s famous 2018 record and stands as yet another improbable tale on the sport’s biggest stage. But unlike Iceland, armed with decades of structured development and the weight of a footballing identity, Curacao’s rise has been a whirlwind.
Only in 2010 did it officially become a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, following the breakup of the Netherlands Antilles. A decade ago, they sat 150th in the FIFA rankings. Today, they’ve climbed to 82nd and more remarkably qualified for the 2026 World Cup.
Jamaica, needing a win to return to the World Cup for the first time since 1998, threw everything forward but were left stunned by a goalless draw that saw an injury-time penalty overturned by VAR. The result pushed Steve McClaren to resign moments after the match, leaving the Reggae Boyz heartbroken yet again.
For Curacao, the moment was historic—despite their coach not even being in the stadium. Dick Advocaat, away for personal reasons, will nonetheless arrive at the 2026 tournament as the oldest coach to ever lead a team at a World Cup. At 78, he overtakes Otto Rehhagel’s previous mark with Greece in 2010.
The road to qualification has been built on resilience. Curacao played 10 qualifiers, won seven, and finished unbeaten—a feat unimaginable just a few years ago. And though the expanded 48-team World Cup format offered more doors to smaller nations, Curacao still had to walk through theirs with conviction. They now join Cape Verde, Uzbekistan and Jordan as debutants at next summer’s Mundial.
For midfielder Juninho Bacuna, the moment is almost surreal.
“It’s crazy and would be one of the biggest things that will happen to Curacao,” he said before the match. “Even a few years ago you would not even think about it. To be personally part of it and to make that dream come true would be incredible.”
That dream is now reality. Curacao—37 miles off the Venezuelan coast, tiny in size but massive in spirit—will step onto football’s grandest stage for the first time, carrying with them a story even more astonishing than their island’s outline on the map.