Preliminary Phase
Caribbean Zone
Teams in the Caribbean Zone were drawn into home-and-away, knock-out pairings, grouped into three pools. Cuba, St. Vincent and Trinidad ~amp~ Tobago were seeded as head of the respective pools (based on their results in the 1998 qualifying). The winners of Round 3 of each pool qualify as Caribbean #1, #2 and #3 for the semi-final round.

Central American Zone
Two groups of three teams each are playing a round robin, with home-and-away matches. The winners of each group will qualify directly for the semi-final round. The groups' runners-up play off against the Round 3 losers of Group 2 and Group 3 of the Caribbean Zone.

Semi-Final Round
The draw for the semifinal round of qualifying in the Football Confederation for the 2002 Korea/Japan FIFA World Cup was held Friday 28 April at the FIFA Sonnenberg headquarters in Zurich, determining the three groups of four teams that will begin play in July.

The 12 teams will be known after the completion of the Interzone Round in mid-June, when the runners-up of the three Caribbean Zone groups will play the runners-up of the two Central American Zone groups, along with Canada. The winners of the Caribbean Zone and Central American Zone groups will be determined when play is completed after the third weekend of May.

The three groups of four teams will each play in a round-robin on a home and away basis from 12-16 July 2000 to 14-15 November 2000. The top two teams of each group go through to the Final Round, where three finalists will advance to the 2002 World Cup Finals.

Final Round
The two top teams of each group of the semi-final round form one final group, playing a home-and-away round robin.

The opening date of matches in the Final Round of qualifying for the 2002 FIFA World Cup has been moved back two weeks. The first set of the matches, originally set to be played over the weekend of 13-14 February, will now be played over the weekend of 27/28 February.

The date change was necessitated by a shift of dates in the UEFA (Europe) calendar for World Cup qualifying matches.

The 3 top teams in the final round qualify for the final competition.