World Cup Draw Simulator Update: Fixes for Custom Groups
Publisher: Football Sim Lab · Published
You finish editing the pots, try to make a draw, and get stuck. Or you spend time arranging groups yourself, then reach the standings and find an older set of teams waiting there.
Neither is much fun. Several messages sent through our feedback form in August pointed to problems around that part of the World Cup simulator: choosing teams, drawing groups and getting the same setup into the next stage.
We went back through those reports and checked both fresh tournaments and saved setups. Some of the exact symptoms were hard to reproduce in the current version, but the checks exposed gaps we could fix. This update concentrates on those gaps.
Edited pots shouldn't block a valid draw
One report described the hosts sitting in Pot 1 while the draw still refused to start.
We found a way to lose the host information: remove Canada, Mexico or the USA, then add the country back from the team list. The name and flag could look right, but the setup screen no longer recognized the team as a host. The pots screen and draw engine were also applying different checks.
Re-added hosts now recover their tournament information. Custom pots use the same roster validation as the draw engine, without an extra host-flag requirement blocking an otherwise valid field.
There are still rules to satisfy in the 48-team World Cup modes: 48 different teams, 12 in each pot and a field that can meet the regional restrictions. If the setup fails a check, the page explains what needs attention.
Every team gets one place, including in saved setups
Another message described France appearing across multiple pots. We couldn't reproduce that through the current team picker, which already hid selected countries. We did find that a duplicated team could get through when restoring a saved roster, provided the total counts looked correct.
Counts alone aren't enough. A list can contain 48 entries without containing 48 different teams.
The setup and draw now check team identities as well as totals. The editor guards against adding a country twice, and manual groups disable countries already assigned elsewhere. Before continuing, the simulator checks that every selected team appears exactly once.
Group L has to be complete too
The report about a missing team in Group L led us to a related problem. Some checks looked only at the groups supplied to them, rather than confirming that the whole tournament was present.
The 2026 and 2030 draw paths now share the same draw engine. For their 48-team formats, validation checks all groups from A to L, four teams per group and the identities of all 48 selected teams. Missing groups, duplicate assignments and incomplete saved draws cannot slip into the next stage.
A failed draw also keeps the previous completed result available and gives you an error to work from. You can return to the setup and correct it.
Your manual groups carry through to the standings
This was the most frustrating handover to get wrong: arrange the teams, continue, and discover that the standings came from an earlier draw.
The manual editor now passes the completed groups directly into both the draw state and the group-stage state. It no longer relies on the previous screen's version of the draw during that transition.
We also changed how selections are identified. A country is saved by its team code rather than its displayed name. Older name-based selections are migrated without moving their group slots. If a saved choice can no longer be matched, it stays visible for correction instead of being quietly replaced with another country.
Automatic drawing now runs only in simulated mode, so it doesn't start another draw while you're arranging groups manually. Switching between groups preserves your assignments.
Names, flags and a less disruptive next click
A report about Türkiye showing an unreadable name prompted another check. The current translation and flag data were present, but matching official teams by their English names was fragile.
Official groups now resolve teams by code, with a fallback to the official roster. Team cards can use the stored country name if a translation is missing.
Repeated browser testing also caught an unnecessary page reload when moving between screens with different advertising modes. That reload could interrupt the next click even before an advertising script had loaded. Route changes now stay in the same document in that case. When an advertising runtime does require a fresh page, the latest tournament results are preserved.
Try the setup that gave you trouble
The fixes were checked with edited rosters, restored saves, manual groups and full tournament runs. Draw checks included 200 runs for the 2026 setup and 200 for the 2030 projection. Browser testing covered phones and desktop layouts across Chromium, Firefox and WebKit.
If you previously got stuck, try your setup again. The controls guide covers team selection, group scores and the route through the knockout stage.
Want a competition without the World Cup's regional restrictions? Free Tournament is the place to change those rules. The fixes above make the existing World Cup rules more dependable; the custom mode lets you choose a different format.
If something still goes wrong, send us the page, tournament mode and steps you took. Those details help us find the difference between a setup that fails a rule and a draw that has actually gone wrong.