At the conclusion of its meeting today in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) unveiled the preliminary draw for the 2026 World Cup African qualifiers.
Amavubi of Rwanda features in Group C alongside Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Benin, South Africa, and Nigeria. with whom they will compete to secure a spot in the next world cup which will be jointly hosted by Canada, the US, and Mexico.
Djibouti will play the opening match of the qualifiers, as part of group A.
Ethiopia joins Djibouti in Group A, along with Seriolione, Guinea Bissau, Burkina Faso, and Egypt.
Group B features South Sudan, Sudan, Togo, Mauritania, Congo DR, and Senegal.
Group C includes Rwanda, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Benin, South Africa, and Nigeria.
Mauritius is in Group D with Eswatini, Libya, Angola, Cape Verde, and Cameroon.
Eritrea falls in Group E alongside Niger, Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, and Morocco.
In Group F, there are Gambia, Kenya, Burundi, Seychelles, Gabon, and Cote d’Ivoire.
Group G includes Mozambique, Somalia, Uganda, Botswana, Guinea, and Algeria.
Group H features Namibia, Liberia, Sao Tome and Principe, Malawi, Equatorial Guinea, and Tunisia.
Group I shows Chad, Madagascar, Comoros, Central African Republic, Ghana, and Mali.
On May 18, CAF altered the qualifying procedure at its Executive Committee meeting in Algiers.
54 countries were seeded in six pots before being randomly placed in nine groups, each with six teams.
To choose CAF’s representative at the FIFA play-off event, the top four group runners-up will then compete in a play-off round.
One team from each of FIFA’s six confederations, excluding UEFA, will compete in the FIFA play-off competition, together with a team from the host confederation (Concacaf).
According to the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, two of the six teams will be seeded. The seeded teams will compete against the winners of the first two knockout matches between the four unseeded teams in order to qualify for the FIFA World Cup.
On May 19, the Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) Executive Committee approved the schedule for the FIFA 2026 World Cup qualifiers and the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2023’s final draw date.
The qualifying matches will take place on ten matchdays over the course of the next two years, the first of which will be on November 13-21, 2023.
The next match days will be held on June 3-11, 2024, March 17-25, 2025, September 1-9, 2025, October 6-14, 2025, and November 10-18, 2025.
This 23rd edition of the world cup tournament will count 48 participating countries instead of the conventional 32. This means that African teams as well as teams from the other confederations will secure more spots.
With these alterations, the final 2026 world cup draw will form 12 groups with 4 teams each. The number of games played in total will increase from 64 to 104, and the tournament will last between 38 to 40 days.