Association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

is the most popular sport in nearly every European country, and

UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...

is one of the six confederations of world football's governing body

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

. UEFA contains 55 national association members, some of which are partially or entirely located in Asia. A total of 33 of the current members of UEFA have competed at the men's

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...

, while the defunct

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

qualified once. European nations have won the FIFA World Cup a record 12 times.

Overview

*Bold indicates year(s) of best finish

Results

Most finishes in the top four

Team results by tournament

The team ranking in each tournament is according to FIFA. The rankings, apart from the top four positions (top two in 1930), are not a result of direct competition between the teams; instead, teams eliminated in the same round are ranked by their full results in the tournament. For each tournament, the number of teams in each finals tournament (in brackets) are shown. ;Legend

Tournament standings

* Quarter-finals = knockout round of 8: 1934–1938, 1954–1970, and 1986–present; second group stage, top 8: 1974–1978 * Second round = second group stage, top 12: 1982; knockout round of 16: 1986–present

Overall team records

As per statistical convention in football, matches decided in

extra time Overtime or extra time is an additional period of play specified under the rules of a sport to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played onl ...

are counted as wins and losses, while matches decided by penalty shoot-outs are counted as draws. 3 points per win, 1 point per draw and 0 points per loss. ; Breakdown of successor team records

Appearances

Ranking of teams by number of appearances

Team debuts

:*This total number of UEFA teams which have participated in the World Cups through 2018 is 34, using FIFA's view on successor teams (e.g., Russia is a successor of USSR and not a separate team, whereas Ukraine is a newer separate entity). :#Israel represented AFC in the 1970 tournament.

Overview

Results

Most finishes in the top four

Team results by tournament

Tournament standings

Overall team records

Appearances

Ranking of teams by number of appearances

Team debuts

Not qualified

Footnotes

Notes

See also