The World Cup is here: Trump looms over 2026 draw at Kennedy Center

President Trump loves to be center stage in trade deals, peace pacts and televised Cabinet meetings.

On Friday, he took over the globe’s biggest sporting event — the FIFA World Cup.

Mr. Trump loomed over festivities as model Heidi Klum, comic actor Kevin Hart and a who’s who of the beautiful game held a draw to set early soccer matchups for the 2026 edition in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Mr. Trump was awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize and helped draw participating countries from the pot with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

“We have to come up with another name for the NFL stuff,” Mr. Trump said of football, as soccer is called in the rest of the world, declaring the festivities “incredible.”

The U.S. was drawn against Paraguay for its first game, in Los Angeles, and will face Australia and an eventual playoff winner in group play.

The draw was viewed as a light one for the U.S., though anything can happen in a tournament.

“We need to perform,” U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said on the Fox network.

The World Cup is held every four years and draws billions of global viewers.

The tournament will be played among 48 national teams in cities across North America from early June to mid-July.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy estimated that 1 billion people were watching Friday to see who would play whom in the first stage of the tournament, which expanded from 32 teams in past editions to 48.

Many countries have secured their spots after grueling qualifying campaigns, though playoffs in the coming months will determine which nations take the remaining slots.

The draw on Friday determined each country’s opponents for the first three games of World Cup group play. Teams that survive the initial round will advance to knock-out games until the final on July 19.

The expanded tourney and remaining playoff slots made it difficult to determine the dreaded “Group of Death,” a subjective debate about the hardest group.

Online chatter coalesced around Group I. France, with Kylian Mbappe and a very deep squad, will face West African powerhouse Senegal and Norway, a dark-horse favorite featuring English Premier League star Erling Haaland. A playoff winner will round out the quartet.

Mr. Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration and rail companies will be ready to deliver a “seamless” experience for the global influx of visitors.

Fans will be served a series of tasty matchups in the early going. Powerhouse Brazil is set to play Morocco, an upstart national team that reached the 2022 semifinals, in group play.

Croatia beat England in a 2018 semifinal, and the two nations will meet again in this summer’s group stage.

Among the hosts, Mexico will play South Korea, South Africa, and a playoff winner.

Canada will play Switzerland, Qatar and another playoff winner.

Mr. Trump is serving as host in chief, and the draw venue was Exhibit A.

The Kennedy Center is a D.C. fixture that Mr. Trump reshaped in his image, and the draw featured some of Mr. Trump’s favorite musical performers.

Mr. Trump is fueling excitement around the tournament, saying each match is on par with the Super Bowl.

“We’ve set a record of ticket sales, as you probably heard already, even way before, long before the event itself. We’re working with Canada, and we’re working with Mexico, and it’s been really spectacular so far. It’s been spectacular,” Mr. Trump said before the draw.

The president has welcomed Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA — which stands for Federation Internationale de Football Association — to the White House multiple times, and Mr. Trump attended the Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey last summer as a test run for the 2026 event among international teams.

From the stage on Friday, Mr. Infantino greeted Mr. Trump before anyone else and gave him a special peace prize and medal.

The draw had the usual trappings of these things — celebrities were there, English pop star Robbie Williams performed — but also had a pep rally feel.

Mr. Infantino said they were in America, so it had to be “a show.”

The Village People closed Friday’s draw with Mr. Trump’s signature song, “YMCA.”

Global icon Leo Messi led Argentina to victory at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It was the South American country’s third title in the competition.

Brazil has won five World Cups, the most of any nation, followed by Germany and Italy at four apiece.

France and Uruguay have each won two, while Spain and England each lifted the cup once.

The U.S. has never won. It reached the semifinals at the inaugural edition in 1930, though its best finish in recent times was a quarterfinal loss to Germany in 2002.