The 2026 AFC U-20 Women's Asian Cup will be the 12th edition of the AFC U-20 Women's Asian Cup (including previous editions of the AFC U-20 Women's Championship and AFC U-19 Women's Championship), the biennial international youth football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the women's under-20 national teams of Asia.
The tournament is scheduled to be held in Thailand between 1–18 April 2026.[1][2] For the first time, a total of twelve teams will compete in the tournament[3] and there will be no third place playoff.[4] The top four teams of the tournament will qualify for the 2026 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in Poland as the AFC representatives. DPR Korea are the defending champions.
The host country qualified automatically. Eleven teams will be decided by the qualification process,[3] in a single round of qualifying, taking place between 2–10 August 2025.
The draw was held on 10 November 2025 at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.[5] The twelve teams will be drawn into three groups of four teams. The teams will be seeded according to a points system derived from their final rankings across the previous three editions, with the hosts Thailand automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.
Players born between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2010 were eligible to compete in the tournament. Each team had to register a squad of minimum 18 players and maximum 23 players, minimum three of whom must be goalkeepers (regulation articles 21.2 and 26.3).
Group stage
The top two teams of each group and the two best third-placed teams qualified for the quarter finals.
Tiebreakers
Teams were ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point 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 9.3):[4]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams are tied and they met in the last round of the group;
Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
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