National team appearances in the FIFA World Cup a group stage, with the final 16 progressing to knockout stages to decide the winner. As of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, 79 national teams have competed at the final tournaments. Brazil are the only team to have appeared in all 21 tournaments to date, with Germany having participated in 19, Italy in 18, Argentina in 17 and Mexico in 16. To date, eight nations have won the tournament. The inaugural winners in 1930 were Uruguay; the current champions are France. The most successful nation in the competition are currently Brazil, who have won the cup on five occasions. Five
2006 FIFA World Cup seeding farther than the seedings predicted, Portugal going on to reach the semi-finals. 2006 FIFA World Cup seeding To calculate the seeding for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, FIFA used the FIFA World Rankings in combination with performances of national teams in the two previous World Cups. Points were allocated on the basis of 32 for the best achieving of the 32 qualifiers for 2006 FIFA World Cup in each of the five fields considered, down to one for the lowest ranking. The seedings table uses these points obtained from the 1998 FIFA World Cup and the 2002 FIFA World Cup