England draw Greece in first round of 2027 Women's World Cup play-offs

England's path to the 2027 Women's World Cup opened with a draw that should suit the favourites and test them at the same time. A seeded England side landed Greece in the first round of the UEFA play-offs in Nyon, with the second leg due at home.

The draw was made on Thursday 18 June 2026 and involved 32 teams across two rounds of home-and-away ties. England entered Path 1 as one of the seeded sides, which secured the return leg on home soil, while Greece came from the unseeded group alongside Hungary, Romania, Belarus, Kosovo, Lithuania, Croatia and Kazakhstan.

For England, the pairing is less about novelty than expectation. FIFA's women's world ranking update published this week placed England fourth, and UEFA's ranking structure keeps them among Europe’s leading nations. Greece sit well below that tier, so the first-round tie looks manageable on paper, but it also sets a clear standard: anything less than progress would be read as a misstep for a team expected to reach Brazil.

If England advance, they will meet either Slovakia or Ukraine in the second round. Those ties are scheduled for 26 November to 5 December 2026, after the first-round matches between 7 and 13 October 2026. The bracket leaves little room for drift, because the play-offs will decide seven direct European places at the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup and one berth in the inter-confederation play-offs.

The pressure is sharpened by the fact that the four League A group winners, Denmark, France, Germany and Spain, have already qualified directly. England were not among them after finishing outside the automatic places in the league stage, which made this draw a necessary detour rather than a formality.

The same draw also set Northern Ireland against Portugal, Scotland against Czechia and Wales against Albania, giving the British associations a full set of high-stakes October ties. UEFA has framed the route as the final European filter for a tournament that will run from 24 June to 25 July 2027 in Brazil, the first Women's World Cup staged in South America.

For England, Greece is a test of control rather than survival. The draw offered a seeded team a favourable first step, but it also made plain that the expectation is not merely to compete in the play-offs, but to use them as the route to Brazil.