England v Spain kicks off at Wembley at 19:45 BST (20:45 CEST) on Saturday, live on ITV, in the opening game of the 2026/27 Nations League for both sides. It is their first meeting since Spain won the Euro 2024 final 2-1 in Berlin, and Spain arrive as world champions. England were minutes from meeting them in that final this summer, before conceding twice late in the semi-final against Argentina after Thomas Tuchel had made defensive changes.
Tuchel will be without five players from the squad he named. Declan Rice, Cole Palmer, Marcus Rashford, Kobbie Mainoo and Tino Livramento have all withdrawn, and Morgan Gibbs-White and James Garner have come in. On Friday Tuchel called Palmer's absence another missed opportunity. He said the forward had missed too many camps through injury, that he was not blaming him, and that players can only impress him by being there.
Harry Kane was asked whether the withdrawals meant players were putting England second in a season that follows a World Cup.
Everyone is extremely proud to be an England player. Everyone has their own individual circumstances, physical situations, mental situations. That's down to the player and coach to talk and sort out.
Harry Kane, pre-match press conference, Friday
Kane called the schedule gruelling. England play four games in 11 days: Czechia in Prague on Tuesday, Croatia in Rijeka on 3 October, then Czechia again at Wembley on 6 October. When he named his squad, Tuchel said he wanted England to be, for spells, a little more like Spain, able to control a game with the ball rather than chase it. There is no harder place to test that than against the team that won the World Cup doing it.
Spain have their own gaps. Luis de la Fuente is without Joan Garcia, Gavi and Borja Iglesias. Pedro Porro withdrew injured, and Marcos Llorente has retired from international football. Dean Huijsen and Fermín López return, while Pedri and Lamine Yamal lead a squad that has changed little since the summer.
De la Fuente made the same complaint as Kane about the calendar, saying four games in ten days was not ideal. He was blunter about his own players, insisting there would be no complacency after the World Cup and that what Spain had achieved so far was not enough. He called England the third-best side in the FIFA ranking and Wembley the best stage there is.
Spain's last visit to Wembley ended in a 2-1 win in 2018, the most recent meeting between the two on English soil. Croatia and Czechia complete Group A3 and meet in Prague at the same time on Saturday. Spain host Croatia in Seville on Tuesday and Czechia in Oviedo on 3 October.
