On 18 November 2025, Curaçao drew 0–0 with Jamaica in Kingston. Jamaica hit the woodwork more than once, Eloy Room kept everything else out, and the point sealed first place in Group B and the island’s first-ever place at a World Cup.

It capped an unbeaten campaign under head coach Dick Advocaat: ten qualifying matches, seven wins, three draws, 28 goals (the most of any team in Concacaf qualifying) and a 7–0 win in Bermuda five days before. Advocaat missed the final match after leaving the camp for family reasons; his assistants Dean Gorré and Cor Pot led the team in Kingston.

Back home, the island partied through the night. “Enemies were hugging each other. It was a crazy time,” Curt Obersie, who runs a bike tour business on the island, told GOAL. Brenton Balentien, the painted-blue fan known as Captain Blueface, remembered: “Everybody came out on the streets to celebrate with the guys.”

The next day, thousands lined the streets of Willemstad as the squad rode in from the airport on an open-top bus, and fireworks lit up the sky that night.

Curaçao lies in the southern Caribbean, roughly 65 km off the coast of Venezuela. Along its western coast, limestone cliffs drop into turquoise bays.

Football has been organised here for more than a century: the island’s football association, today’s FFK, was founded in 1921 and held its first championship with eight clubs that same year.

It is a small island with a big football following, and on match nights it watches together.

Most of the squad were born or raised in the Netherlands, many after playing for Dutch youth teams. Each of them chose to play for Curaçao.

Captain Leandro Bacuna was one of the first. Born and raised in Groningen, he played for the Netherlands at youth level before making his Curaçao debut in 2016. “I chose to play for Curacao, one of the best choices I’ve made,” he told Flashscore. During a Gold Cup he phoned his brother Juninho, then still with the Dutch under-21s, and told him: “I need some help.” Juninho followed.

Tahith Chong is the only player in the squad born on the island. He grew up in Curaçao, moved to the Netherlands as a boy and came through the Dutch youth teams before debuting for Curaçao in 2025. Asked by FIFA why he chose Kòrsou, he said: “It just felt like home.”

For Bacuna, that feeling is the entry ticket: “If you don’t feel it in your heart, I think you can’t be part of the group.”

With a population of just over 150,000 and a land area of 444 km², Curaçao became the smallest nation ever to qualify for a World Cup. The record had belonged to Iceland, who reached Russia 2018 with a population of around 350,000.

Ten qualifying matches without defeat, and a first World Cup point in a 0–0 draw with Ecuador in June 2026.

The adidas away kit is pastel yellow, with bold pink, turquoise and orange stripes and blue on the sleeves, cuffs, logos, names and numbers.

It takes its palette from the painted facades of Punda and Otrobanda, the two historic districts on either side of St. Anna Bay in Willemstad that make up a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Launching the shirt, FFK president Gilbert Martina said: “It reflects our identity, our character.”