Due to FIFA expanding its Club World Cup competition to 32 teams and having it scheduled for June and July that year, this edition of the tournament will be played between 21 December 2025 and 18 January 2026.[4] The situation has been further complicated by the addition of two extra match days scheduled for the last two weeks of January in the expanded Champions League that begins next season in Europe.[5] That means the traditional window for Afcon in mid-January to mid-February (when the knockout stages of the Champions League are due to start) is likely to cause even more disruption than usual.
This edition of the tournament was scheduled to be the second after 2019 to take place during the northern hemisphere's summer, in order to reduce scheduling conflicts with European club teams and competitions;[6] the previous 2023 edition was moved to January and February 2024 owing to the adverse summer weather conditions in Ivory Coast.[7]Guinea was originally set as hosts for this edition of the tournament, but had its hosting rights stripped after affirming its inadequacy of hosting preparations.[8][9] After a second bidding process,[10] Morocco was named as the new hosts on 27 September 2023.[11]Ivory Coast are the defending champions.[12]
CAF stripped Cameroon from hosting the 2019 edition of the tournament on 30 November 2018 due lack of speed of progress in preparations,[13] but accepted former CAF president Ahmad Ahmad's request to stage the next edition in 2021. Consequently, the original hosts of 2021, Ivory Coast, became hosts of the 2023 edition with Guinea instead hosting the 2025 edition, which until then had no hosts.[14] The CAF President confirmed the timetable shift after a meeting with Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on 30 January 2019.[15] On 30 September 2022, current CAF president Patrice Motsepe announced that Guinea had been stripped as host for the 2025 edition due to inadequacy and speed of progress in hosting preparations.[8] Consequently, a new process was re-opened for a replacement host bidder.[10][16] On 27 September 2023, the 2025 edition was awarded to Morocco[11] and the 2027 edition to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.[17][18]
The qualifiers were held between 20 March and 19 November 2024, starting with the preliminary round (20–26 March 2024) and then the group stage (2 September–19 November 2024).[19] The preliminary round draw was held on 20 February 2024, 14:00 CAT (UTC+2) at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.[20] The eight involved national teams were seeded into two pots of four based on the FIFA World Rankings from 15 February 2024 ,[21]Seychelles and Eritrea were excluded from the qualifiers. The eight teams were split into four ties which were played in home-and-away two-legged format.[22] The four winners: Chad, Eswatini, Liberia and South Sudan advanced to the group stage to join the 44 teams which entered directly.[23] The group stage draw took place on 4 July 2024, 14:30 CAT (UTC+2) in Johannesburg, South Africa. The 48 national teams involved were divided into twelve groups of four each, which consisted of the 44 teams that entered directly, in addition to the four winners of the preliminary round, and were seeded into four pots of twelve each based on the June 2024 FIFA World Rankings.[24][25]
The following teams qualified for this edition, all of them have previously participated in the tournament.[26]Morocco, the host country, played in the qualifiers in Group B despite qualifying automatically. Ghana, four-time African champions, failed to qualify after finishing bottom of the Group F, missing out on the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time since 2004.[27][28]Tunisia qualified for the 22nd time and extended their record for consecutive participations, reaching the tournament for the 17th time in a row, having not been absent since 1994.[29]Comoros, Gabon, Sudan and Zimbabwe made their return to the continental tournament after missing out on 2023.[30]Benin and Uganda made their return after an almost five-year absence from the event. Botswana qualified for the second time after their first participation in 2012.[31]Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Namibia also failed to qualify after appearing in 2023.
Teams will be ranked according to the three points for a win system (3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0/none points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 74):[32]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams were tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, if two teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are applied exclusively to these two teams;
^"CAF President Dr Motsepe announces African Super League launch details, AFCON 2023 and Champions League key decisions" (Press release). CAFOnline.com. 3 July 2022. Archived from the original on 3 July 2022. Retrieved 3 June 2023. ...the Executive Committee has decided that this edition of the tournament (the 2023 edition) will be postponed to the months of January and February 2024. The postponement is as a direct and sole result of the adverse weather conditions in the country and after also having received further technical opinion from experts on adverse effects of staging the matches in that period, as June and July are rainy seasons in Ivory Coast.
Morocco
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Algeria
DR Congo
Senegal
Egypt
Angola
Equatorial Guinea
Ivory Coast
Gabon
Uganda
South Africa
Tunisia
Nigeria
Mali
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Comoros
Sudan
Benin
Tanzania
Botswana
Mozambique
