England will need to overcome Greece and either Slovakia or Ukraine to qualify for 2027’s Women’s World Cup, while Scotland were handed a significantly tougher-looking draw and will probably need to beat Sweden, one of women’s football’s most successful nations, if they first beat Czechia, to qualify for next year’s finals in Brazil.

Thursday’s playoff draw brought Wales a potential reunion with their former manager Gemma Grainger’s Norway side in another tricky draw. Northern Ireland’s path to a first World Cup next summer could bring them a game against the League A team Iceland.

The first round of the European playoffs will be held over two legs between 7 and 13 October, before the second round – also over two legs – takes place between 26 November and 5 December. England, who reached 2023 World Cup final but have never won the world title, are heavy favourites to defeat Greece and either Ukraine – whom they beat 3-0 in June at Hill Dickinson Stadium during qualifying – or Slovakia. The Lionesses would be at home in the second leg of both rounds.

The draw appeared to be relatively kind to England, who avoided many of the higher-ranked sides from the Fifa rankings such as Belgium, Switzerland or Scotland.

In contrast, Scotland, who unlike England were not one of the top seeds, would need one of their greatest results to get past Sweden, semi-finalists in three of the past four World Cups. Sweden start against Lithuania. Scotland’s only World Cup appearance came in 2019.

Wales, who have never qualified, will face Albania in round one, with the winners facing Romania or Norway, whom Grainger left Wales to take charge of in 2024.

The Republic of Ireland, who defeated the Netherlands during an impressive qualifying campaign, were seeded and will meet Kazakhstan in round one, before a potential clash with Belgium or Poland. They are chasing a second consecutive World Cup appearance.

Sarina Wiegman’s England had to settle for place in the playoffs despite taking 15 points from a possible 18 in their qualifying group, having finished second behind Spain by virtue of the defending world champions’ superior head-to-head record.

England beat Spain 1-0 at Wembley in April but lost June’s reverse fixture in Mallorca 4-0, with those matches being a repeat of last summer’s European Championship final and the most recent World Cup final.

Europe had nine automatic qualifiers for the 2023 tournament but only four European sides qualified for 2027’s edition automatically after a major revamp of the qualification format and a large expansion to the playoff process.