🇳🇴 Norway at the 2026 World Cup

Norway compete in Group I of the FIFA World Cup 2026, playing matches in Boston and New York/New Jersey. This is Norway’s first World Cup since France 1998, a 28-year absence that ends in the summer when Erling Haaland finally gets to answer the question that has followed his entire career.

Haaland has won the Premier League, the FA Cup, the Champions League, and the Ballon d’Or with Manchester City. He has scored at a rate that statisticians run out of comparisons for. He broke the Premier League’s single-season scoring record with 36 goals in 2022/23. In the 2023/24 Champions League campaign alone he scored 12 times. Against that backdrop, his international record reads like a footnote from a parallel career: Norway failed to qualify for Euro 2024, failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, failed to qualify for Euro 2020. For years, the most lethal centre-forward in world football sat at home while lesser squads played tournament football.

That context is everything. 2026 is not just Norway’s first World Cup in nearly three decades. It is Haaland’s first World Cup, and possibly his only realistic chance to add a major international tournament to a club resume that already contains almost everything else.

Norway qualified as group winners from UEFA qualifying, finishing ahead of Israel, Austria, Estonia, and Kazakhstan. The path was not glamorous, but getting there with Haaland available and firing is the only qualification that matters. Norway’s second significant presence is Martin Odegaard, the Arsenal captain, who provides the technical creativity in midfield to feed a striker who converts at historically exceptional rates.

Group I is demanding. France are the bookmakers’ tournament favourites. Senegal reached the round of 16 in 2022 and won the Africa Cup of Nations. Iraq qualified through a competitive AFC pathway. Norway will need points from both the France and Senegal matches to advance, and Haaland’s ability to score against elite opposition at a tournament for the first time will define whether this campaign becomes a story of arrival or a lesson in the difference between club and international football.

Group I Match Schedule

• June 16: vs Iraq, Gillette Stadium Boston. 18:00 ET (00:00 June 17, Oslo)
• June 22: vs Senegal, MetLife Stadium New York. 20:00 ET (02:00 June 23, Oslo)
• June 26: vs France, Gillette Stadium Boston. 15:00 ET (21:00, Oslo)

Viewing from Norway

The France match on June 26 at 21:00 Oslo time is the slot Norwegians have been circling since the draw. A normal evening kickoff for a potential group decider featuring the best striker in the world against the tournament favourites. The Iraq opener falls at midnight in Oslo, and the Senegal match arrives at 02:00, requiring real commitment from fans on the Eastern seaboard of Central Europe.

For Norwegian-Americans concentrated in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Washington state, all three matches fall at comfortable evening or afternoon hours. The largest Norwegian diaspora community in the United States lives in Minneapolis, a city where the question of whether Haaland can finally deliver on the biggest stage will be debated over the summer with the intensity of a long-postponed reunion.

Check Oslo time and Norway time for live conversions throughout the tournament.