How Is the 2026 Women's Basketball World Cup Decided?

Sixteen teams play 36 games over 10 days in Berlin, from 4 to 13 September 2026. They are drawn into four groups of four, each group played as a single round robin, so every team is guaranteed three games before anything is decided.

This is the twentieth edition and the first with 16 teams. FIBA expanded the field from the 12 that played in Sydney in 2022, which is why the bracket shape below has no precedent at a Women's World Cup.

Winning your group is worth more than seeding. The four group winners are placed directly into the quarter-finals, while the teams finishing second and third must win an extra elimination game first - a fourth game in the legs, against a live opponent, before the quarter-final.

The teams finishing fourth are eliminated at the end of the group phase and take the places from 13th to 16th. From the quarter-finals onwards the tournament is straight knockout: quarter-finals, semi-finals, a third-place game and the final.

For the mechanics of the scoring itself - what a shot is worth, when the bonus arrives, how the clock is managed - see how basketball scoring works and the basketball live scoreboard guide.

The draw placed the 16 qualified teams into four groups of four. Hosts Germany were drawn into Group A alongside Japan, Spain and Mali; defending champions the United States head Group D with Czechia, Italy and China.

Group B pairs the two European qualifiers Hungary and France with Korea and Nigeria. Group C is the most continentally mixed of the four: Belgium, Australia, Puerto Rico and Türkiye.

The cross matchups in the Qualification to Quarter-Finals round pair Groups A and B with each other, and Groups C and D with each other. That means a Group A runner-up already knows the pool its next opponent comes from before its own group is finished.

FIBA ranks a group on classification points, not on wins alone. A win is worth 2 points, a loss is worth 1 point, so a team that goes 3-0 shows 6 points and a team that goes 0-3 still shows 3.

Two results break that pattern. A team that forfeits a game loses it 20-0 and receives 0 classification points (Art. 20.2.1). A team that defaults - it drops below two players fit to play during the game - keeps 1 classification point (Art. 21.2.1).

When teams finish level, the rulebook does not go to overall points difference. Under Appendix D.1.3 the games between the tied teams decide first, and only if that mini-league is still level do the further criteria apply, in the fixed order below.

This is the single most misread rule in international basketball. A team with the best point difference across the whole group can still finish below a team it lost to, because the head-to-head result is applied before any group-wide number is touched.

If every criterion is exhausted, the FIBA ranking decides in national-team competitions such as this one. In competitions with no FIBA ranking, the placing is settled by a draw.

The Qualification to Quarter-Finals is a single, do-or-die game that gives the second- and third-placed teams one more chance at the bracket. It is played across groups: A2 v B3, B2 v A3, C2 v D3 and D2 v C3.

Finishing third in a group of four is therefore not elimination. Twelve of the sixteen teams in Berlin are still alive after the group phase, which is the structural reason the field could be widened to 16 without turning the group games into dead rubbers.

The round changes what a group game is worth. A team that has already secured second place still has a reason to win its last game, because the difference between second and third decides whether it meets a group runner-up or a group's third-placed team in the crossover.

The four winners advance to face the group winners in the quarter-finals. The four losers are eliminated and take the places from 9th to 12th - the first placings in this tournament that are settled by a classification rule rather than by a game.

Berlin is played under the FIBA Official Basketball Rules 2024. The OBR 2026 was published in July 2026 but comes into force on 1 October 2026 - seventeen days after the World Cup final on 13 September.

That makes this tournament the last major FIBA event officiated under the outgoing text, and three things a viewer will see in Berlin are rewritten immediately afterwards.

The unsportsmanlike foul still exists in Berlin. From 1 October it is abolished and split into a disruptive foul (Art. 37) for tactical contact and a flagrant foul (Art. 38) for reckless, dangerous or excessively hard contact. The free throws are unchanged, so the scoreline is untouched - only the label and the disqualification maths move.

Game disqualification in Berlin follows the old arithmetic: two technical fouls, two unsportsmanlike fouls, or one of each. From 1 October technical fouls split into two categories and only category 1 counts, so a delay-of-game technical no longer pushes a player towards disqualification.

Goaltending review is the third. Under the OBR 2024 the referees may review a goaltending or basket-interference call only when the clock shows 2:00 or less in the fourth quarter and in each overtime. A head coach can already reach it earlier, because the coach's challenge ignores those time limits, but each coach gets one challenge per game. From 1 October the referees themselves may review such a violation after a foul at any time of the game.

The foul side of this rulebook is covered in the basketball referee guide, and the violation side - travelling, double dribble, goaltending - in basketball violations explained.

No team in Berlin plays a classification game outside the third-place match. Every placing from 5th to 16th is therefore produced by a ranking rule applied to teams that were eliminated at the same stage.

FIBA has just rewritten that rule. The OBR 2026 adds a new Appendix D.5.2, which groups the four teams eliminated at each stage - after the group phase, after the Qualification to Quarter-Finals, and after the quarter-finals - and ranks them on group-phase evidence: higher group placing first, then win-loss record, then game points difference, then game points scored, with the FIBA ranking as the final tiebreak.

FIBA's stated reason for the change is that the previous rules lacked clarity for ranking teams outside the final stages, particularly where no classification games were played. The worked example FIBA published alongside it uses a bracket of four groups of four with the crossover games A2 v B3, B2 v A3, C2 v D3 and D2 v C3 - the exact shape of the Berlin tournament.

The timing is the point. D.5.2 takes force on 1 October 2026, seventeen days after the Berlin final, so the tournament that its worked example describes is the last one it will not govern. In Berlin the placings follow the rulebook in force plus the tournament's own competition regulations.

The practical reading for a viewer is simple: in a 16-team bracket with no classification games, your group-phase record keeps working for you long after your last game. A heavy defeat in a dead rubber can still cost a placing.