CAF holds 2027 AFCON qualifiers preliminary draw today

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) will on Tuesday hold the draw for the preliminary round of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers, marking the formal start of the qualification process for the tournament.

Ahead of the draw, CAF on Monday released the official seeding pots for the teams involved in the opening phase. Six teams have been placed in each pot.

Pot 1 features Lesotho, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eswatini, South Sudan and Mauritius, while Pot 2 consists of Chad, São Tomé and Príncipe, Djibouti, Somalia, Seychelles and Eritrea.

Under the qualification format, each team in Pot 1 will face a team from Pot 2. The lower-ranked teams will host the first leg, with the ties decided over two matches played home and away.

At the end of the preliminary round, the six winning teams will advance to the group stage draw, where they will join Africa’s top 42-ranked national teams in the race for qualification.

The 2027 AFCON will be the 35th edition of Africa’s flagship football competition, although CAF has yet to announce the host country.

Nigeria, ranked among Africa’s leading football nations, is exempt from the preliminary round and will enter the competition at the group stage.

Meanwhile, the Super Eagles are currently in action at the 2025 AFCON in Morocco, where they have won all five of their matches so far and are set to face host nation Morocco in the semi-finals on Wednesday.