The Guardian has published its Next Generation 2026 list, naming 60 of the most talented young players in world football. The selection is restricted to players born in 2009, making this the latest intake in a series that has tracked emerging talent for well over a decade.
The 2026 class is a global one. Among those included is a player described as “the new Toni Kroos”, while Cavan Sullivan is singled out as the United States’ next big hope. The feature sets out to identify the players at the earliest stage of their careers rather than to judge them on what they have already achieved.
The world list follows a separate Premier League edition of the same series, which picked out 20 leading talents at English top-flight clubs. The broader Next Generation project has produced a new class every year, with previous editions in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021, and archives running back to 2014.
The series’ back catalogue offers some indication of how such lists can age. Its 2017 edition, which covered players born in 2000, included Vinicius Júnior, who had already signed for Real Madrid at the time, along with a player nicknamed “the Romanian Donnarumma”.