Canada will learn its qualifying road for the 2019 Women’s World Cup at the Sept. 4 draw in Miami for the 2018 CONCACAF Women’s Championship.
The eight-country regional qualifying tournament, set for Oct. 4-17 in Cary, N.C., and Edinburg and Frisco, Tex., will send three teams from North and Central America and the Caribbean to next year’s Women’s World Cup in France. The fourth-placed team will take part in an intercontinental playoff against Argentina.
The United States, as the host country, and second-ranked Canada will play in separate groups. Mexico has also already qualified.
Two teams will come from the Central American Women’s Qualifier that starts on Aug. 27 with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama taking part.
Three more countries will come from the Caribbean qualifying round, which starts on Aug. 25 and features Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda, Cuba, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
The five teams that advance will join Mexico and be placed in three different pots depending on their ranking for the draw.
Group B, which features Canada, will play its preliminary-round games on Oct. 5, 8 and 11 at H-E-B Park in Edinburg, a 9,700-seat stadium that is home to the Rio Grande Valley FC Toros of the USL.
Group A, which includes the United States, will play its games on Oct. 4, 7 and 10 at 10,000-seat Sahlen’s Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary.
The top two finishers in each group will then cross over to meet in the Oct. 14 semi-final at Toyota Stadium in Frisco. The third-place match and championship game are slated for Oct. 17 at Toyota Stadium.
The two finalists and third-place finisher automatically qualify for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which runs from June 7 through July 7.
The United States has won seven of the nine CONCACAF championships. Canada won the other two and has finished as the runner-up four times
Host country France, Brazil, Chile, Spain, Italy, China, Thailand, Japan, Korea and Australia have already qualified for the 24-team World Cup.
Canada, which hosted the last World Cup, lost in the quarter-final to England in 2015.