2022 FIFA World Cup qualification – AFC third round

The third round of AFC matches for the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification was played from 2 September 2021 to 29 March 2022.

Format
The twelve teams that advanced from the second round (the seven group winners excluding Qatar and the five best group runners-up) were divided into two groups of six teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches. The top two teams of each group qualified for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and the two third-placed teams advanced to the fourth round. World Cup hosts Qatar won Group E in the second round (which meant they advanced to the 2023 AFC Asian Cup finals) but were not required to qualify for the World Cup.

Draw and seeding
The draw for the third round was held on 1 July 2021 at 15:00 MST (UTC+8), in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The seeding for the draw was based on a special release of the FIFA Men's World Rankings for Asian teams on 18 June 2021 (shown in parentheses below).

Each group contained one team from each of the six pots.

Note: Bolded teams qualified directly for the World Cup. Italicised teams qualified for the fourth round.

Schedule
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia, FIFA announced on 12 August 2020 that the upcoming qualifying matches originally scheduled for 2020 were moved to 2021, and on 11 November, the AFC Competitions Committee also announced that the final round of the Asian qualifiers would begin in September 2021 and be finished by March 2022.