The draw for the 1998 FIFA World Cup took place on 4 December 1997 at the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille, France. For the first and only time in World Cup history, the draw was held at a stadium with a live audience of around 38,000 spectators. The ceremony featured no formal hosts, while former footballers and football figures including Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto Parreira, George Weah, Julie Foudy, Raymond Kopa, Jean-Pierre Papin, Georges Carnus, and Marius Trésor took turns drawing the balls on the field.

For the seeding of qualified teams at the 1998 FIFA World Cup, FIFA used the FIFA World Rankings in combination with performances of national teams in the three previous FIFA World Cups.

For the FIFA World Ranking part, points were allocated on the basis of 32 points for the highest ranked team of the 32 qualified teams at the end of each preceding three years, down to 1 point for the lowest ranked team.

For the World Cup performance part, points were allocated as follows:

The seedings table calculated a sum of points scored by each national team from the 1986 FIFA World Cup, 1990 FIFA World Cup and the 1994 FIFA World Cup averaged in a 1:2:3 ratio respectively, that finally got multiplied by a 1.2 weighting factor to account for 60% of the total sum of points. The seedings table also calculated a sum of points scored by each national team from the FIFA World Rankings at the three given dates December 1995, December 1996 and November 1997, averaged in a 1:1:1 ratio and finally multiplied by a 0.8 weighting factor to account for 40% of the total sum of points. The total points were finally the sum of these two calculated totals.

France were seeded as hosts, Brazil as defending champions. The other seeds were: Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Romania, and the Netherlands.

The 1998 FIFA World Cup seeding are broadcast live on TF1, France Television and Canal+ in France.