🇵🇾 Paraguay at the 2026 World Cup

Paraguay compete in Group D of the FIFA World Cup 2026, playing all three group matches on the US West Coast in Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area. The Albirroja missed three consecutive tournaments in 2014, 2018, and 2022, and return to the World Cup with the specific weight of a football culture that knows it can reach a quarter-final, because it did it in 2010, and spent the years since watching from home.

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa is the reference point for everything Paraguay does internationally. They topped their group, beat Japan on penalties in the round of 16, and led Spain 0-0 at half-time of the quarter-final before a defensive breakdown in the second half ended a run that remains the furthest a Paraguayan side has ever gone. That team was built around goalkeeper Justo Villar, defender Paulo da Silva, and a defensive organization so disciplined that Spain, the eventual world champions, could not find a way through for 70 minutes. The model worked. The squad that missed the next three tournaments was not inferior in individual quality. It was inferior in the collective application of the same principles.

Qualification for 2026 came through CONMEBOL under coach Daniel Garnero, with key contributions from Miguel Almirón, the Newcastle United midfielder who spent years as the most underappreciated technically gifted player in the Premier League before his form in the 2022/23 season converted the skeptics. Almirón’s ability to run beyond defenders and finish in tight spaces gives Paraguay a dimension that was missing from their early 2026 qualifying campaign. Alongside him, Antonio Sanabria of Torino leads the attack with the kind of striker intelligence that Serie A has developed in him over several seasons.

Group D places Paraguay against the USA as co-hosts, Australia, and Turkiye. It is a group where the quarter-final template from 2010 is not irrelevant: organize well, give nothing away, make the most of your moments. Three points from two of those three matches puts Paraguay in the knockout round.

Group D Match Schedule

• June 12: vs USA, SoFi Stadium Los Angeles. 18:00 PT (21:00, Asuncion)
• June 19: vs Turkiye, Levi’s Stadium San Francisco. 21:00 PT (00:00 June 20, Asuncion)
• June 25: vs Australia, Levi’s Stadium San Francisco. 19:00 PT (22:00, Asuncion)

Viewing from Paraguay

Paraguay Time (PYT, UTC-3 in summer) gives Asuncion fans a workable evening schedule throughout the group stage. The USA opener arrives at 21:00, a Saturday night match in Los Angeles that becomes prime time in Paraguay. The Australia match lands at 22:00. Only the Turkiye fixture, reaching midnight, requires any sacrifice.

The Paraguayan diaspora in Argentina and Brazil follows this team closely, particularly when the return from a three-tournament absence is on the agenda. For fans in Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo, the timezone math is identical to Asuncion. On the West Coast of the United States, the Paraguayan community is smaller than the broader South American population, but SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles will hold a crowd that understands what the USA match means to a South American side playing for relevance.

Almirón’s last chance at a World Cup stage at 32 years old makes this the story within the story. At 2010, nobody gave Paraguay a quarter-final. They took it anyway.

Check Asuncion time and Paraguay time for live conversions.