Luis de la Fuente <\/a>has confirmed the 26-player squad that will travel to the 2026 World Cup, ending weeks of speculation ahead of the tournament in the United States, Mexico and Canada.<\/p>\nThe squad, announced on Monday, combines experienced internationals with emerging talent as Spain target a second World Cup title.<\/p>\n
In the goalkeeping department, De la Fuente opted against taking an additional uncapped reserve goalkeeper and instead selected three senior options. Athletic Club’s Unai Sim\u00f3n is expected to remain first choice after previously helping Spain win the European Championship and Nations League.<\/p>\n
He will be backed up by Arsenal’s David Raya and Barcelona’s Joan Garc\u00eda.<\/p>\n
\nRevamped defence\n<\/p>\n
The biggest surprise came in defence. The defensive group includes established figures such as Aymeric Laporte (Athletic Bilbao) and Marc Cucurella (Chelsea), alongside younger, less experienced options such as Pau Cubars\u00ed (Barcelona), Eric Garc\u00eda (Barcelona) and the uncapped Marc Pubill (Atl\u00e9tico).<\/p>\n
Tottenham right-back Pedro Porro also earns a place after missing out on previous major tournaments and will compete with Atl\u00e9tico’s Marcos Llorente for a starting berth.<\/p>\n
However, these call-ups surprisingly come at the expense of Malaga CF academy product Dean Huijsen (Real Madrid) and Robin Le Normand (Atl\u00e9tico), who had been the established pair for De la Fuente in the most recent Nations League campaign.<\/p>\n
\nContinuity\n<\/p>\n
The midfield largely reflects the core that has defined recent years. Manchester City’s Rodri returns after recovering from a serious knee injury and is expected to play a central role.<\/p>\n
Barcelona trio Pedri, Gavi and Dani Olmo were also included, while Arsenal pair Mart\u00edn Zubimendi and Mikel Merino retain their places.<\/p>\n
Paris Saint-Germain’s Fabi\u00e1n, from Seville, and Almeria-born \u00c1lex Baena (Atl\u00e9tico) were among the other selections.<\/p>\n
In attack, teenage star Lamine Yamal heads a forward line that also includes Nico Williams (Athletic), Y\u00e9remy Pino (Crystal Palace), V\u00edctor Mu\u00f1oz (Osasuna), Ferran Torres (Barcelona) and Mikel Oyarzabal (Real Sociedad).<\/p>\n
Veteran striker Borja Iglesias (Celta de Vigo) was selected as the only out-and-out new centre forward option in the squad.<\/p>\n
\nTraining camp\n<\/p>\n
The squad announcement completes Spain’s World Cup selection process and finalises the group that will attempt to add another star to the national team’s shirt.<\/p>\n
Players are due to begin reporting for training on 30 May, before a programme of preparatory matches against Iraq (4 June) and Peru (9 June).<\/p>\n
Spain will then begin their World Cup campaign with group stage matches against Cape Verde (15 June), Saudi Arabia (21 June) and Uruguay (27 June).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jorge Garrido \/ Javier Varela 25\/05\/2026 Actualizado a las 14:53h. Spain coach Luis de la Fuente has confirmed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4222,14764,2058,14762,3538,17,528,14763,4546],"class_list":["post-29386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-4222","tag-confirmed","tag-cup","tag-dean","tag-huijsen","tag-spain","tag-spains","tag-squad","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}