The Caucasus in the 2026 FIFA World Cup11 min read
- The 2026 FIFA World Cup marks a first for Central Asia, as Uzbekistan has become the region’s first national team to compete in the tournament after an impressive qualifying campaign. The South Caucasus, by contrast, remains absent, as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia will have to wait at least another four years for a World Cup debut. Notwithstanding the absence of a national team from the Caucasus, the expanded format of the World Cup has given the region an unprecedented presence in the world’s most popular sporting event through club soccer. DR Congo’s Timothy Fayulu, Panama’s Roderick Miller, and Tunisia’s Hazem Mastouri all currently play for clubs in the Caucasus, while other players and coaches at the tournament have passed through clubs in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the North Caucasus, as well as in the Caucasus-adjacent regions of Türkiye and Iran.
This survey examines clubs from the Caucasus whose current and former players or coaches are represented at the 2026 World Cup through various national teams.
FC Noah, Yerevan, Armenia
DR Congo goalkeeper, the Swiss-born Timothy Fayulu, gives Armenia its clearest link to the 2026 World Cup, as he currently plays for FC Noah in Yerevan on loan from the Swiss club FC Sion. The club was founded as FC Artsakh before its 2019 renaming, which replaced a direct reference to Artsakh, the Armenian name for Karabakh, with biblical symbolism centered on Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is traditionally believed to have come to rest. In 2024, Noah became the first Armenian club to reach the league phase of a European club tournament, qualifying for the UEFA Conference League. In the following season, Noah reached the knockout stage of the same tournament.
Turan Tovuz, Tovuz, Azerbaijan
Panama defender Roderick Miller provides Azerbaijan with a direct current connection to the 2026 World Cup, as he plays for Turan Tovuz, a club based in the Azerbaijani town of Tovuz on the country’s northwestern border with Armenia. The club’s name invokes Turan, a cultural and geopolitical concept centered on the shared Turkic, Persianate, and Islamicate heritage across various Turkic-speaking communities in Eurasia. Numerous modern Azeri writers, thinkers, and politicians have championed this idea, whose latest institutional expressions include the Organization of Turkic States. Turan Tovuz’s visual identity reinforces this association: the team’s crest prominently features the symbol used by the Turkic Council, now the Organization of Turkic States. In July 2020, only months before the 44-Day War, the Tovuz area, alongside the adjacent Armenian region of Tavush, became the site of heavy fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.
Qarabağ FK, Aghdam/Baku, Azerbaijan
Qarabağ FK is connected to the 2026 World Cup through Cape Verde’s Leandro Andrade, who currently plays for the club, and Yassine Benzia of Algeria, Wilde-Donald Guerrier of Haiti, and Dino Ndlovu of South Africa, who previously played for it. The club was founded in the city of Aghdam near the border of the Soviet-era Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. After the First Karabakh War depopulated the city, Qarabağ spent the next three decades based in Baku while retaining the name of its home region. In the past decade, Qarabağ’s repeated appearances in European competitions have made it Azerbaijan’s most visible soccer club abroad. In the 2025–2026 season, Qarabağ reached the UEFA Champions League knockout phase play-offs for the first time, only to be humbled by Saudi-owned Newcastle United at home and away. Since the end of the Second Karabakh War in 2023, Qarabağ has played low-stakes domestic games at the main stadium in Khankendi (Stepanakert), the former capital of the now-defunct Republic of Artsakh.
Araz-Naxçıvan, Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan
Araz-Naxçıvan is connected to the 2026 World Cup through Cape Verde midfielder Patrick Andrade, who currently plays for the club and previously played for Qarabağ. The club is based in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan. Its name comes from the Araz, or Aras, the river that runs along the Iranian border. First established in 1967, the club folded after the Soviet collapse. After a short-lived revival in the early 2000s, the club was re-established in 2013. Ten years later, Araz-Naxçıvan won Azerbaijan’s second division, earning promotion to the country’s top flight, where it has since become a title contender.
Dinamo Tbilisi, Tbilisi, Georgia
Haiti’s Dominique Simon connects Georgia to the 2026 World Cup through his 2024 spell at Dinamo Tbilisi. For much of the Soviet period, Dinamo was often the only Georgian team in the Soviet top flight. Its greatest triumph came in 1981, when Dinamo won the European Winners’ Cup by defeating East Germany’s Carl Zeiss Jena in Düsseldorf. The victory was remembered in Georgia not only as a sporting achievement, but as a national moment: the celebrated actor and commentator Kote Makharadze described it on live television as “the happiest day of the Georgians since the reign of Tamar the Great.” In October 2025, Dinamo Tbilisi celebrated its centenary.
Dynamo Makhachkala, Makhachkala, Dagestan
Tunisia’s Hazem Mastouri directly connects Dagestan to the 2026 World Cup, as he plays for Dynamo Makhachkala. The club’s name points to the same Soviet institutional genealogy as Dinamo Tbilisi: Dynamo was the sports society connected to the Soviet security apparatus (the KGB and its predecessors) and its facilities operated across the USSR under the patronage of internal affairs and state security structures. After the dissolution of Dagestan’s more internationally recognized team, Anzhi Makhachkala, Dynamo Makhachkala became the region’s only club in the Russian top flight. It now uses both its Soviet-era stadium in downtown Makhachkala and the world-class Anzhi Arena in the suburb of Kaspiysk as home grounds.
Anzhi Makhachkala, Makhachkala, Dagestan
Iran’s Saeid Ezatolahi, Uzbekistan’s Dostonbek Khamdamov, and Iraq assistant coach René Meulensteen connect the 2026 World Cup to Anzhi Makhachkala: Ezatolahi played for the club on loan in 2017, Khamdamov joined it in 2018, and the former Dutch midfielder Meulensteen briefly served on its coaching staff in 2013. The club’s name, Anzhi, means “pearl” in Kumyk, the former lingua franca of the Caspian littoral of Dagestan, and refers to Makhachkala, formerly Port-Petrovsk. It is also the name of a Soviet-era indoor bazaar in downtown Makhachkala, where a recently built luxury residential complex bearing the same name is now awaiting its first inhabitants. Anzhi became internationally known after Dagestani billionaire Suleyman Kerimov purchased the club in the early 2010s, bringing Roberto Carlos, Samuel Eto’o, Willian, and other international stars to Dagestan. After a sequence of budget cuts and years competing in lower divisions, the club was dissolved in 2022. In September 2024, days before Kerimov’s feud with the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov escalated into the widely publicized armed attack on the headquarters of the Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries in Moscow, Anzhi was re-established as a semi-professional team in the fifth division of the Russian league system.
Akhmat Grozny, Grozny, Chechnya
Iran defender Milad Mohammadi connects Chechnya to the 2026 World Cup through the three seasons he spent with Terek Grozny from 2016 to 2019. During his time at the club, Terek was renamed Akhmat Grozny in honor of Akhmat Kadyrov, the father and predecessor of Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov. The new name ties the club directly to Chechnya’s postwar political order, as numerous cultural and military institutions in the republic now carry the name Akhmat. Consistently sitting in the lower half of the league table in the past seasons, Akhmat continues to benefit from the fanfare and financial support of the republic’s political establishment, with world-class training facilities at the very center of Chechnya’s capital and frequent signings of promising young international players from African and Balkan countries.
Alania Vladikavkaz, Vladikavkaz/Grozny, North Ossetia
New Zealand’s Kosta Barbarouses connects North Ossetia to the 2026 World Cup through his brief spell with Alania Vladikavkaz more than a decade ago. Alania’s name invokes the official Alan symbolism of North Ossetia, and its crest has featured the colors of the republic’s flag since the late-perestroika years, when the club still competed under its previous name, Spartak Vladikavkaz. The club achieved its greatest success in the 1990s, winning the Russian league title in 1995 under Valery Gazzaev. Numerous well-known Ossetian soccer figures have been associated with the club, including Gazzaev, Stanislav Cherchesov, and Alan Dzagoev. The current president of Georgia, Mikheil Kavelashvili, also had two loan spells with the team during his career as a soccer player. The club is historically based in Vladikavkaz but has played recent home games in Grozny while its main stadium undergoes repairs. Some Alania fans traveling to “home” games have reported being hassled for displaying Ossetian national symbols while passing through Ingushetia.
FC Krasnodar, Krasnodar, Krasnodar Krai
Cape Verde’s Kevin Pina and Colombia’s Jhon Córdoba connect Kuban (Krasnodar Krai) to the 2026 World Cup as current players of FC Krasnodar. The club was founded in 2008, by which point the region’s main Soviet-era team, Kuban Krasnodar, had already entered a downward spiral that culminated in its dissolution in 2018. FC Krasnodar’s crest features a charging bull, a symbol associated less with the city itself than with the club’s links to the nearby town of Ust-Labinsk, where one of the Soviet-era collective farms connected to its founder’s business background had used similar imagery.
Iğdır FK, Iğdır, Türkiye
Cape Verde’s Ryan Mendes and Curaçao’s Leandro Bacuna connect Türkiye’s eastern borderland to the 2026 World Cup as current players of Iğdır FK. The club is based in Iğdır (formerly known in Armenian as Tsolakert/Tsolagerd), a city on the Aras Plain near Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dagı) and Türkiye’s borders with Armenia, Iran, and Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave. Formerly part of Kars Province until 1992, Iğdır belonged to the Russian Empire for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and remains the cultural center of Türkiye’s Azeri community. The club was founded in 2016 as an amateur team, turned professional in 2021, and currently competes in Türkiye’s second division.
Çaykur Rizespor, Rize, Türkiye
Côte d’Ivoire goalkeeper Yahia Fofana, Haiti striker Frantzdy Pierrot, and Türkiye defender Samet Akaydin connect Türkiye’s eastern Black Sea littoral to the 2026 World Cup as current players of Çaykur Rizespor. The club is based in Rize, the center of Türkiye’s tea-producing region, with a local population that includes Hamshens, Laz, and Georgians. The club’s name comes from Çaykur, the state-linked tea company that sponsors the team. Its crest, colors, and jersey ads all build on tea as both an industry and a regional symbol.
Trabzonspor, Trabzon, Türkiye
Cape Verde’s Wagner Pina and Côte d’Ivoire’s Christ Inao Oulaï connect another club on Türkiye’s eastern Black Sea coast, Trabzonspor, to the 2026 World Cup as current players, while DR Congo’s Simon Banza, Egypt’s Trezeguet, and Türkiye’s Uğurcan Çakır and Eren Elmalı previously played for the club. Based in Trabzon, Trabzonspor is an overachiever in modern Turkish soccer, a club that broke Istanbul’s domination by winning the Turkish Süper Lig in 2022. The region’s identity is deeply tied to Black Sea agriculture and beekeeping, including the Caucasian bee and local honey traditions, most notably deli bal (“crazy honey”), widely known for its reputed medicinal properties. Trabzonspor also has a heavy diaspora culture. Paterson, New Jersey, a major North Caucasus diaspora center in the Western Hemisphere, is home to a Trabzonspor fan club whose façade carries the club’s motto, “Bize her yer Trabzon” – “Everywhere is Trabzon for us.”
Tractor S.C., Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, Iran
Iran’s Alireza Beiranvand, Shoja Khalilzadeh, Mehdi Torabi, and Amirhossein Hosseinzadeh, along with Uzbekistan’s Odiljon Khamrobekov, connect Iranian Azerbaijan to the 2026 World Cup as current players of Tractor S.C. Iran head coach Amir Ghalenoei also previously coached the club, while his assistant Andranik Teymourian played there in two separate spells. Based in Tabriz, the historical center of Iranian Azerbaijan, Tractor takes its name from the city’s tractor manufacturing industry, but its significance has far exceeded its industrial origins. The club is a pillar of the identity of Iran’s Azeri population, with a fan culture built around the Azeri language and Azeri national symbols. It is worth noting that Andranik Teymourian, an ethnic Armenian and Iran’s first Christian national team captain, had two spells with Tractor.
The Caucasus’s presence in the 2026 World Cup is real but modest. Most of the players listed here have limited recognition beyond their national fan bases, and many represent national teams far outside soccer’s established top echelons, including World Cup debutants like Cape Verde, Curaçao, and Uzbekistan. This marginality reflects the current level of development of soccer in the region. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are still struggling for recognition on the international stage, although Georgia now looks best positioned to become the first South Caucasus country to reach the World Cup after its impressive run at Euro 2024 and the phenomenal stardom of the Paris Saint-Germain striker Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. In Russia, Türkiye, and Iran, the clubs associated with the Caucasus sit far from the national soccer epicenters of Moscow, Istanbul, and Tehran. Despite its cultural richness, the Caucasus remains peripheral to the prevailing structures of money, power, and prestige in the hyper-commercialized world of soccer.
