About the South American teams, I can tell you that there will be no disappointment as you are imagining.
Of the 10 teams that compete in the qualifiers, I can say that perhaps only Bolivia and Venezuela are far below normal and would have difficulties competing in a world cup.
The top tier teams are the 3 obvious ones: Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
The national teams of Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Colombia and Peru are teams that play the world cup regularly (not like the top 3), but all these countries have good players that play in the European leagues and a good team.
So if the 7 Conmebol teams qualify for the 2026 World Cup, you can be sure that they will be competitive teams and with good conditions to play at the same level of the second tier of European tems for example.
I believe that for 2026 those who will miss out will be Bolivia, Venezuela and Paraguay.
To be fairly honest, I am down with even more teams, have 64 teams, have 16 groups with 4 teams, make them all play 6 games, twice each other, and then make them play a 32 team round facing each other, once again twice, then 16, then quarter finals, then semi, all twice, and finals would be one game. That would be so many games I don't even know how many, but that would be amazing to watch, could go on for months (could be done all year throughout).