CAF Finally Confirms Start Date For 2025 AFCON

The Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) has confirmed that the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (2025 AFCON) will commence in December of the said year.

Since the 2023 AFCON ended on February 11, 2024, there have been a series of back and forth over when the 2025 AFCON will commence.

The original plan was that the tournament would kick off in the summer of 2025 in Morocco, unlike the last two editions of the tournament which had to start in winter due to unfriendly weather conditions in the host countries.

Unfortunately, the world football governing body, FIFA, decided to fix the expanded version of the Club World Cup in the same window CAF wanted to host the 2025 AFCON.

Hence, the African football body had to look for an alternative as they tried to prevent the edition from taking place in the next FIFA World Cup year (2026).

This made the January and February window of 2026 to be totally out of the discussion initially. Recall that the 2021 AFCON in Cameroon took place from January to February 2022, the same as the 2023 AFCON in Ivory Coast which took place from January to February 2024 due to unfriendly weather conditions.

After the CAF virtual executive meeting on Friday, the football body agreed that the AFCON 2025 should start on December 21, 2025, and end on January 18, 2026.

Naija News has earlier reported that the 2025 AFCON draw will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa in June.

The qualifiers for the tournament will start in September and end in October 2024.