Due to FIFA expanding its Club World Cup competition to 32 teams and having it scheduled for June and July 2025, this edition of the tournament is played between 21 December 2025 and 18 January 2026.[5] It will be the first time that the tournament will be played over the Christmas and New Year period. 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 2025–26 UEFA Champions League season.[6]
This edition of the tournament was scheduled to be the second after 2019 to take place during the northern hemisphere's summer (June–July), in order to reduce scheduling conflicts with European club teams and competitions;[7] the previous 2023 edition was moved to January and February 2024 owing to the adverse summer weather conditions in Ivory Coast.[8]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.[9][10] After a second bidding process,[11] Morocco was named as the new hosts on 27 September 2023.[12]Ivory Coast are the defending champions.[13]
Host selection
CAF stripped Cameroon from hosting the 2019 edition of the tournament on 30 November 2018 due to lack of speed of progress in preparations,[14] 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.[15] The CAF President confirmed the timetable shift after a meeting with Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on 30 January 2019.[16] 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.[9] Consequently, a new process was re-opened for a replacement host bidder.[11][17] On 27 September 2023, the 2025 edition was awarded to Morocco[12] and the 2027 edition to Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.[18][19]
Marketing
Assad, the official mascot of the tournament.
Sponsorship
Mascot
The tournament mascot, named ASSAD, was revealed on 8 December 2025. It is a Barbary lion.[20]
Match ball
On 10 November 2025, CAF and Puma unveiled "ITRI" as the official tournament edition match ball.[21]
Prize money
The winners will receive US$10 million, an increase from US$7 million for the 2023 event.[22]
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).[23] The preliminary round draw was held on 20 February 2024, 14:00 CAT (UTC+2) at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.[24] The eight involved national teams were seeded into two pots of four based on the FIFA World Rankings from 15 February 2024,[25]Eritrea and Seychelles were excluded from the qualifiers. The eight teams were split into four ties which were played in home-and-away two-legged format.[24] The four winners: Chad, Eswatini, Liberia, and South Sudan advanced to the group stage to join the 44 teams which entered directly.[26] 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.[27][28]
Qualified teams
The following 24 teams qualified for this edition, all of them have previously participated in the tournament.[29]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.[30][31]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.[32]Comoros, Gabon, Sudan and Zimbabwe made their return to the continental tournament after missing out on 2023.[33]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.[34]Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Namibia also failed to qualify after appearing in 2023.
On 27 January 2025, The Confederation of African Football (CAF) together with Royal Moroccan Football Federation and the Local Organizing Committee of the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations, Morocco 2025 announced the 9 venues in 6 cities that will host matches in the competition.[35]
The CAF announced the tournament schedule on 31 January 2025.[37][38]
The top two teams of each group, along with the best four third-placed teams, will advance to the round of 16.
Tiebreakers
Teams will be ranked according to the three points for a win system (3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 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):[39]
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;
In late September 2025, a series of popular protests erupted in several cities in Morocco by young people calling themselves Gen Z 212.[49][50] The protests were sparked by the deterioration of the country's health and education systems, widespread youth unemployment, and the government's excessive spending on sports infrastructure in preparation for hosting the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2030 FIFA World Cup,[51] which Morocco is co-hosting with Spain and Portugal.[52] On 6 October, during the CAF General Assembly meeting in Kinshasa, CAF President Patrice Motsepe confirmed that there was no intention of Morocco withdrawing from hosting the event and that the tournament would take place on schedule.[53][54]
↑"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.
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