Feature19 June 2026 · By PINtPOINT

Beer World Cup XI

48 nations. Real fixtures. Stupidly serious beer results.

Follow the tournament on X: #BeerWorldCupXI.

The World Cup has 48 nations. Obviously, each one needs a beer squad.

So here's the bad idea: what if countries competed by beer instead of football?

Not official. Not scientific. Not sensible. But absolutely worth arguing about.

Welcome to Beer World Cup XI.

The premise

Every country in the World Cup gets a beer squad.

The tournament follows the real fixtures. The football teams play on the pitch. The beers play in the pub.

Some results will be obvious. Some will be controversial. Some will probably require a steward's inquiry and another round.

That is the point.

Why a squad?

One beer per country is too easy, and usually unfair.

Some countries have obvious flagship lagers. Some have deep brewing cultures. Some have brilliant local beers that never get mentioned. Some are genuinely hard to scout from here.

So every country gets a squad.

That gives us room for:

• obvious national icons
• proper local favourites
• craft contenders
• old-school lagers
• controversial omissions
• emergency call-ups
• reader nominations

Belgium are going to have absurd depth. Germany will be organised. The USA will be impossible to reduce to a clean selection. England will have plenty of options and still find a way to make selection stressful.

This is football heritage, but with bottle caps.

How the tournament works

The rule is simple:

Real fixtures. Beer results.

When two countries meet in the World Cup, we pick beers from each nation's squad and judge the matchup. Like this:

The judging is half-serious, which is to say: serious enough to cause arguments, not serious enough to require a governing body.

The deciding question:

If these two beers met in a neutral pub, which one would you rather drink?

That's the whole game.

Who's running this thing?

Three recurring authorities will appear across the tournament. They will overrule each other. They will agree on nothing.

The whole conceit is loosely based on a distant memory of a Beer World Cup that Loaded magazine ran in the 1990s. We cannot find the issue. The Crisps and Vodka tournaments do survive — along with a few more insalubrious items — so the format definitely existed.

Beers will also be disqualified mid-tournament where appropriate. Krispy Ice was struck out of a Loaded bracket in 1997 for being "the worst thing I've ever tasted." We respect the ruling.

The opening XI

To show how this works, we've picked an example selection.

This is not the final tournament list. It is not the official squad. It is not immune from abuse. It is an opening selection designed to start the argument.

Example call-ups include beers from Argentina, the USA, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Czechia, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Colombia and Uruguay.

Some are iconic. Some are there for balance. Some are already under review by the imaginary selection committee.

You can argue with us. In fact, please do.

The selection headaches

This is where it gets interesting.

Some countries are easy to scout badly and hard to scout well. Anyone can name the obvious lager. That does not mean it deserves the captain's armband.

Some countries have too much depth. Belgium could probably field three squads and still complain about the bench. Germany will expect tactical discipline. The USA has regional chaos disguised as choice.

Some countries need help. Imports are patchy. Local classics are hard to verify. Availability changes. A beer might be culturally obvious but practically impossible to find.

So the squads will evolve.

There will be call-ups. There will be omissions. There will be substitutions. There will definitely be someone saying we picked the wrong Belgian.

Good.

Help pick the squads

This only works if people argue with it.

Tell us what your country should call up.

If your country has been lazily represented by one boring lager for too long, this is your moment.

What's coming

This is the entry point. The rest of the tournament will roll out across the real World Cup window:

1. Squad reveals — 48 countries, each in scouting-report format. Seed status, manager's problem, likely starters, wildcard, selection controversy.
2. Group stage match cards — one matchup, one caption, one verdict. Recurring social format, every fixture.
3. Knockout brackets — Round of 32, Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals, The Final. Visual pages with the same authority as the 1997 magazine spreads they're descended from.
4. The Final — staged as a trophy ceremony. Hero winner page, runner-up visible, completely over-serious match report.
5. Post-tournament awards — Golden Pint, Shock Exit, Best Pub Beer, People's Champion and VAR Robbery Of The Tournament.

Reader nominations get folded into the squads as we build them out. Pub VAR will probably overrule us at least once. The Pint Desk will absolutely have opinions about it.

See upcoming Beer World Cup XI fixtures and results for the live campaign board. Country squads land on the All Country Line-Ups page as they're announced.

Disciplined bracket. Absurd authority. Tiny verdicts. Fake gravitas. Real pub arguments.

If you're actually going to a match, use the Stadium Beer Map. This is the nonsense version where beers play football.