The FIFA World Ranking is a ranking system for men's national teams in association football, currently led by Spain. The teams of the member nations of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), football's world governing body, are ranked based on their game results with the most successful teams being ranked highest. The rankings were introduced in December 1992, and seven teams (Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain) have held the top position, of which Brazil have spent longest ranked first.

A point system is used, with points being awarded based on the results of all FIFA-recognised full international matches. Under the existing system, rankings are based on a team's performance over the last four years, with more recent results and more significant matches being more heavily weighted to help reflect the current competitive state of a team. The ranking system was most recently revamped after the 2006 World Cup, with the first edition of the new series of rankings issued on 12 July 2006. The most significant change, is that the rankings are now based on results over the previous four years instead of the previous eight years. The change is perceived to respond to criticisms, that the FIFA world rankings, based upon the previous calculation method in use from January 1999 to June 2006, did not effectively reflect the relative strengths of the national teams.

A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either 'ranked higher than', 'ranked lower than' or 'ranked equal to' the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two different objects can have the same ranking. The rankings themselves are totally ordered. For example, materials are totally preordered by hardness, while degrees of hardness are totally ordered.

By reducing detailed measures to a sequence of ordinal numbers, rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information according to certain criteria. Thus, for example, an Internet search engine may rank the pages it finds according to an estimation of their relevance, making it possible for the user quickly to select the pages they are likely to want to see.

Analysis of data obtained by ranking commonly requires non-parametric statistics.

It is not always possible to assign rankings uniquely. For example, in a race or competition two (or more) entrants might tie for a place in the ranking. When computing an ordinal measurement, two (or more) of the quantities being ranked might measure equal. In these cases, one of the strategies shown below for assigning the rankings may be adopted.