The draw was held on 12 December 2024 at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.[1][2]
First Round: The 12 lowest-ranked teams, based on previous U-20 Women's World Cup qualifiers performance, will contest in this round. The six winners will advance to join the 26 top-ranked teams exempted from the first round.
Second Round: The six first-round winners and 26 exempted teams will form 32 teams. These will battle it out for 16 spots in the third round.
Third Round: The remaining 16 teams will compete in a knockout format to determine the eight teams advancing to the fourth round.
Fourth Round: The final eight teams will play knockout ties, with the winners earning qualification to the 2026 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup.
Entrants
A total of 38 (out of 54) CAF member associations registered teams for the competition. The teams were seeded based on their performance in the previous qualifying campaign. The four lowest-ranked teams, along with eight associations that did not participate in the previous edition, entered the first round, which featured six ties. The winners of these ties advanced to the second round.
The teams were seeded into pots based on geographical distribution, with UNAF, UNIFFAC, and WAFU placed in one pot, and CECAFA and COSAFA in the other. Ties were drawn between teams from the same pot to minimize travel costs.
Qualification ties were played on a home-and-away two-legged basis. If the aggregate score was tied after the second leg, the away goals rule would be applied, and if still tied, the penalty shoot-out (no extra time) would be used to determine the winner.[3]
Guinea-Bissau won on walkover and advanced to the third round after Congo withdrew prior to the first leg without giving any clarification on the reason.
1 2 The country previously registered for the African qualifiers in this category but has not yet played an international match.
↑ Niger won on a walkover and advanced to the second round after FEGAFOOT withdrew its women's under-20 team without giving any clarification on the reason.[4]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.