There are 54 African countries battling for the 24 berths available to the next Africa Cup of Nations tournament (AFCON) to be held beginning in January 2024 in the Ivory Coast.
Defending champions Senegal will be facing fierce competition from fellow African powers Egypt, Algeria, Cameroon, Morocco, host nation Ivory Coast, and others as they look to become the first back-to-back AFCON champions since Egypt won three straight in 2006, 2008, and 2010.
To reach the AFCON finals in 2024, nations must progress through qualifying, which can be ruthless in deciding which countries achieve a spot in the tournament.
The Sporting News brings you all the necessary details about how AFCON qualifying works, when the matches are, and how they play out.
Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers format
To qualify for AFCON, teams must progress through a group stage style qualification format.
First, the lowest-ranked teams must push through a preliminary stage which narrows the field. The preliminary stage consists of 12 teams paired up into six matchups, which are contested across two legs. The losers on aggregate are eliminated, while the six winners advance to the 44-team group stage.
Once that 48-team group stage is set, the field is split into 12 groups of four, with each group contesting a full six-match round robin.
The top two finishers in each group advance to AFCON, while the bottom two in each group are eliminated. This produces the 24 qualifiers who will reach the final tournament.
Ivory Coast have already qualified for AFCON as hosts, but they still contest the qualification matches. Their group, Group H, will produce only one official qualifier, meaning the highest finisher outside of Ivory Coast (of the three participants Zambia, Comoros, and Lesotho) will earn the group’s lone spot.
Africa Cup of Nations 2023 qualifier fixtures, results
Preliminary round
The higher-ranked teams among the preliminary round participants were seeded in the draw, and played the second leg at home. The games were contested in late March of 2022.
In March of 2022, Eritrea announced it would withdraw from AFCON 2023 qualification. No reason for the decision was announced. The nation has not contested a senior international fixture since a friendly against Sudan in 2020, while their last competitive fixture was in 2019 against Namibia in 2022 World Cup qualifying.
There was controversy around the matchup between Sao Tome & Principe and Mauritius. Sao Tome & Principe won the first leg 1-0, but goalscorer Luis Leal was accused of breaching COVID-19 regulations, which saw their opponents awarded a 3-0 result via forfeit. However, an appeal saw the decision overturned, and that proved decisive as Sao Tome & Principe would advance on an aggregate score of 4-3 after a second leg draw. They were the only unseeded team to advance through the preliminary round.
In the table below, the result of each leg is listed with the home team’s score first. The team to advance is bolded.
Unseeded
Aggregate
Seeded
1st leg
2nd leg
Eritrea
cancelled
Botswana
—
—
Sao Tome & Principe
4-3
Mauritius
1-0
3-3
Djibouti
2-5
South Sudan
2-4
1-0
Seychelles
1-3
Lesotho
0-0
3-1
Somalia
1-5
Eswatini
0-3
2-1
Chad
2-3
Gambia
0-1
2-2
Qualifying Groups
The 48 remaining nations were split up into 12 groups of four at the draw on April 19, 2022. The countries were split into four pots of 12 teams each, broken down by FIFA rankings, with each group consisting of one team from each pot.
Kenya (Pot 2) and Zimbabwe (Pot 3) were under FIFA suspension at the time of the draw, but were included anyways, with the understanding that should they still be under suspension by a deadline of two weeks before the first qualifying matches in June of 2022, they would be disqualified.
Neither suspended nation was able to reverse their position by the deadline, seeing both countries eliminated from the competition. Their groups (Group C and Group K) will still progress two qualifiers to the finals, meaning only one participant in each group will be eliminated.
A number of these fixtures are being played at neutral venues, with Morocco and South Africa serving as a popular destinations, especially for matches involving nations that do not have facilities which meet the international football standards.
