This is a simple FIFA World Cup flags 2022 activity to help get you in the FIFA World Cup spirit! The 2022 FIFA World Cup is scheduled to take place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022.
But before I go on to talk about the FIFA World Cup 2022 flags and activities for kids I want to highlight that this FIFA World Cup has been more controversial than most. There have been many issues raised about how Qatar won the games, what has happened as they have built the infrastructure for the games and the human rights record of Qatar. The Australian Soccer team has released a video statement that is really worth watching and I highly recommend doing so with your kids. You can watch it here – Socceroos statement.
We did our first FIFA World Cup flags activity with the kids back in 2014 (you can see that post here FIFA World Cup 2014 – flags and activities for kids). The kids (and the parents) have loved it so much that as soon as the FIFA World Cup approaches the kids start asking when we are going to set up the flags. While this activity is done in our family for the love and fun of it there is so much learning that happens with it:
- Our kids know all the flags of these countries
- We talk about the continent the countries are from
- We talk about the domestic leagues of soccer they have in each country
- And we have a couple of historians in the family who will often explain bits of history they know about the countries
While we would love to see Australia make it through to the final, having the flag activity going throughout the FIFA World Cup keeps us all invested and watching the matches even when Australia is no longer playing.
How the FIFA World Cup draw works
To set up the FIFA World Cup flag activity it helps to a basic understanding of how the FIFA World Cup works, so here is a very quick summary:
- There are 32 teams divided into 8 groups of 4.
- There are two stages: the group stage followed by the knockout stage.
- The group stage involves a series of round-robin games within the group, with every team playing three games.
- The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage, which is known as the “round of 16”.
- At the round of 16, there are 8 elimination games played.
- The winners of the 8 games go through to the quarter-finals, where there are 4 matches.
- The winners of those games go through to the semi-finals, where there are 2 matches.
- The remaining 2 teams then play out in the World Cup Final.
FIFA World Cup Flags 2022 Activity
This is the group structure for the FIFA World Cup 2022. You can click on each country to find a link to their flag.
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D |
| Qatar | England | Argentina | France |
| Ecuador | IR Iran | Saudi Arabia | Denmark |
| Senegal | USA | Mexico | Tunisia |
| Netherlands | Wales | Poland | Australia |
| Group E | Group F | Group G | Group H |
| Spain | Belgium | Brazil | Portugal |
| Germany | Canada | Serbia | Ghana |
| Japan | Morocco | Switzerland | Uruguay |
| Costa Rica | Croatia | Cameroon | Korea Republic |
To set up this FIFA World Cup 2022 activity for the kids at home here is how it works:
- Print out the flags of all 32 participating countries. Have the kids colour the flags in the correct colours.
- We set them up in 8 groups of 4 flags. All flags will remain on the cupboards until the end of the group stage.
- Once we know which countries didn’t make it through to the round of 16, we will take their flags down.
- The teams that are eliminated in the knock out stage are then removed and we will be left with only 8 flags.
- At the end of the quarter finals another 4 will be removed.
- Then after the semi- finals it will be down to the last two, then of course only the winner is remaining.
FIFA World Cup 2022 activity – create your own family sweep
After the colouring activity is completed we then set up family sweepstakes for the FIFA World Cup 2022. Previously we have writen the names of all the teams on a list and my husband sorts them into groups based on their likelihood to make it through to the finals. We then are all allocated a number of teams for the FIFA World Cup 2022, receiving a mix of teams with a decent chance and those who are unlikely to make it past the group stage.
This year though we have moved to a more complex structure based on the design of the 13 year old. He has created a draft system for us. We used the Wheel of Names website and took the following steps:
- Added everyone’s names to the wheel.
- Went through one full round to allocate everyone a draft pick. The eldest had first pick and I had the last pick. After each spin, we would remove the name of the person who won the spin.
- For the next seven picks, we then went in reverse order to even things out. So I had pick 8 and the eldest had pick 14.
- We then added everyone’s names back to the wheel and spun again, removing the names each time until we had no names left. We repeated this again so we had allocated 28 picks in total.
- We then added all the names back to the wheel for the last four spins (there are 32 teams so we needed to have 32 picks) but this time we left all the names on to give everyone a chance of winning some extra picks. Our daughter ended up winning two of the four picks.
- We are now in a trading period where if you wish you can trade your picks. The youngest is trying to convince me to swap him my pick 7 & 8 for his pick 4. I am still declining at this stage.
- We are going to do our draft picks later this week after dinner on a night when everyone is at home and we will write them up so there is no confusion about who has which team. We are going to use this table which you can download and use if you like too!
Then as the stages of the FIFA World Cup progress, we will take down the flags of the countries which are knocked out. So we will start with 32 flags on our kitchen cupboards, then 16, then 8, then 4, then 2 and finally 1 once the FIFA World Cup Final has been played.
We have simple prizes for our FIFA World Cup 2022 activity for those who have the teams that come 1st, 2nd and 3rd and they are as follows:
- The person who has the winner of the World Cup is allowed to choose a family takeaway meal.
- The person who has the team which lost in the final is allowed to choose the dessert.
- The person who has the team that wins the 3 v 4 play off chooses the drinks for the meal.
We have a great time doing this and it is an activity that everyone can join in and enjoy. Every child coloured in at least one flag – you have to colour in a flag to be eligible to play! Even if their team/s doesn’t make it to the final they still get to have a takeaway dinner which doesn’t happen very often in our house so is something different.