Colombia beats DR Congo to reach World Cup knockout stage

Colombia beat DR Congo 1-0 at Estadio Guadalajara and moved into the next round of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, adding a narrow, disciplined win to a campaign that is starting to look less like promise and more like proof. The Group K match was scheduled for 20:00 in Guadalajara, 21:00 in Bogotá and 03:00 on Wednesday in Kinshasa.

For Colombia, the victory carried the weight of a maturity test. Past generations of the Selección often needed spectacle to announce themselves, but this side under Néstor Lorenzo has already shown it can survive a tight tournament game and still keep moving. That matters in a country where José Pékerman remains the standard for modern World Cup ambition, having taken Colombia to its first World Cup in 16 years and then to the quarter-finals in Brazil in 2014, still the national team’s best finish.

This is Colombia’s seventh World Cup appearance, and its return to the tournament came after missing Qatar 2022. The squad has been built around Luis Díaz and James Rodríguez, with James wearing the captain’s armband and standing as Colombia’s top scorer in World Cups. Those names give the side its ceiling, but this result suggested something else too: a willingness to win without depending on a flowing performance to do it.

The path to this point began with a 3-1 opening win over Uzbekistan on June 17, when Daniel Muñoz, Luis Díaz and Jaminton Campaz scored. That result was especially important because Colombia had lost four of its six World Cup openers before beating Uzbekistan, a history that made a strong start feel less like a luxury than a requirement. Taking six points from two games in Group K now gives Lorenzo’s team a platform that previous Colombian squads too often failed to build.

DR Congo, meanwhile, arrived with its own World Cup history and a side highlighted by FIFA around Cédric Bakambu, Chancel Mbemba and Yoane Wissa. Colombia still found the result, and in doing so added a different kind of credential to its tournament: not flair for its own sake, but control under pressure. For a team measured against 2014, that may be the clearest sign yet that its knockout-round ceiling is higher than the old scripts suggested.