2018 CONIFA World Football Cup qualification

The Confederation of Independent Football Associations (CONIFA) was founded in June 2013, as an organisation to represent football associations that are not eligible or choose not to join FIFA.[1] One year later, it held its first official tournament, the 2014 ConIFA World Football Cup, in Sweden, to which the twelve participating teams were invited. The success of this tournament led to the decision to make it a biannual competition, with continental tournaments taking place in between, the first of which was the 2015 ConIFA European Football Cup.

ConIFA published a set of qualification criteria for the World Football Cup ahead of its 2017 Annual General Meeting, setting out the various methods in which teams could qualify for the WFC.[2] This was subsequently revised into an official version for publication in June 2017.[3]

• Host – Barawa
• World Football Cup Holder – Abkhazia
• Wild Card – CONIFA's Executive Committee were required to give a Wild Card place to a team that has not yet qualified for the WFC no later than 9 months prior to the start of the tournament - this was given to Western Armenia. The Committee also had the right to issue a second Wild Card if approved by CONIFA's Annual General Meeting, which occurred and was given to Tibet.
• Qualification tournament – Any member of CONIFA had the right to request that a tournament it hosts be sanctioned as a qualifier, providing it is held between 1 January of the year of the previous WFC, and 31 December of the year before the next WFC, and consists of at least four CONIFA members. The request to have the tournament sanctioned as a qualifier must be submitted at least two months prior to the start, and must be approved by CONIFA's Executive Committee. Three such tournaments were held, the ConIFA Challenger Cup, the Hungary Heritage Cup and the World Unity Cup 2016.
• Continental tournament – If a ConIFA continental championship is held after the previous WFC, then a number of its participants qualify for the WFC; the total qualifiers is worked out by the number of participants in the tournament divided by 4. Only one such tournament was held, the ConIFA European Football Cup 2017 at which both the winner and runner-up qualified.
• Qualification points – The remaining places (which numbered 8) were distributed according to the final positions in the various CONIFA continental rankings according to their accumulated ranking points, distributed by a system which rewarded playing matches against both CONIFA and other opponents. Where two or more teams from the same continental zone had the same number of qualification points, qualification was be determined by the CONIFA World Rankings.

CONIFA is split into six continental zones, with the total number of places in the World Football Cup based on the number of CONIFA members from each zone. As of January 2021, the distribution of places for the WFC, dependent on the size of the final tournament, is:[2]

[a]: There were no South American members of ConIFA at the time of the tournament
The first qualifying process was undertaken for the 2016 ConIFA World Football Cup, which saw a series of friendly matches and tournaments, together with the 2015 ConIFA European Football Cup, designated as qualifiers for the 2016 WFC.[4][5][6] However, this decision was taken at a late stage prior to the start of the European Football Cup tournament, only a year prior to the planned start of the 2016 WFC in Abkhazia. As a consequence, for its 2018 WFC tournament, ConIFA began designating planned friendly matches as qualifiers from the beginning of 2016, allowing a greater time for those teams achieving qualification to plan for the tournament. The first of these was the ConIFA Challenger Cup, held in Remscheid on 12 and 13 March 2016.[7]

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