The Cuban National football team have appeared at the World Cup only once, at the World Cup in France 1938. In the first round Cuba drew with Romania 3-3 in Toulouse, then won the replay in the same city 2–1. They were then eliminated in the quarter-finals by Sweden, losing 8–0 at Antibes. That run to the last eight remains the best by any Caribbean nation at a World Cup.

Remarkably, Cuba reached those finals without playing a single qualifying match. Every other entrant in their Central American zone – Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Dutch Guiana – withdrew, and the intercontinental play-off against Argentina, scheduled for Bordeaux in May 1938, never took place either after Argentina also pulled out.

Cuba have entered qualifying for most tournaments since without getting close to a return. They came nearest for 1982, when they finished the final round two points short, and for 2006, when Costa Rica eliminated them on away goals. In qualifying for the 2026 World Cup they went out in the second round, finishing third in a group behind Honduras with two wins and two defeats from four matches.

The Caribbean has since been better represented at the finals. Haiti reached the 1974 tournament, Jamaica made it in 1998 and Trinidad and Tobago in 2006, and at the expanded 48-team World Cup of 2026 both Curaçao and Haiti qualified, Curaçao becoming the smallest nation by population ever to reach a World Cup. Neither got out of their group, so Cuba's quarter-final in 1938 still stands as the region's high-water mark.

Trivia

  • Cuba qualified by default for the 1938 World Cup, as every other team in their qualifying zone withdrew – several of them in protest at the tournament not returning to the Americas after the 1934 World Cup in Italy. (The CONCACAF confederation itself was not founded until 1961.)
  • Cuba were the first Caribbean team to make the World Cup (in 1938)
  • Cuba's only World Cup win, the 2–1 replay victory over Romania, came in the days before penalty shoot-outs, when a drawn knockout tie was simply played again.