The Confederation of African Football (CAF) will hold the 2025 Afcon Qualifiers group stage draw this afternoon.
The draw ceremony will be held at SuperSport Studios in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The live coverage on SuperSport TV and CAF YouTube channel will start at 2:30 pm CAT.
The draw will see a total of 48 African nations, including four winners from the preliminary round (Chad, Eswatini, Liberia and South Sudan), engaged to determine who qualifies for the 2025 Afcon.
Seeding:
The highest ranked nations as per the latest FIFA Rankings issued out on 20 June 2024 occupies Pot 1, with the same procedure followed for Pot 2, 3 and 4 to make up the 48 nations.
Pot 1: Morocco, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Egypt, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, Cameroon, South Africa, DRC, Ghana.
Pot 2: Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Benin, Angola, Uganda, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar.
Pot 3: Kenya, Mauritania, Congo, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Comoros, Togo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Central Africa Republic.
Pot 4: Niger, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Gambia, Burundi, Liberia, Ethiopia, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, South Sudan, Chad.
Draw Procedures:
The first ball will be drawn from Pot 4 and will go to position A4.
The procedure will be repeated for the remaining teams of Pot 4 who will go to positions B4, C4, D4, E4, F4, G4, H4, I4, J4,K4 & L4 according to the draw order.
The same procedure as above will be repeated for Pot 3, Pot 2 and finally Pot 1.
Qualification:
The qualifiers are scheduled to kick-off in September 2024.
The qualifiers will be made up of 12 Groups of 4 teams (Group A to L), where the first and runners-up in the eleven (11) groups that do not involve tournament hosts Morocco, will gain qualification to the competition.
For teams that finish first and second in a group consisting of Morocco, who by virtue of being tournament hosts gain automatic qualification, the following scenarios will be applied:
-If the host is ranked first, the host is qualified in addition to the second of the group.
-If the host is ranked second, the host will qualify in addition to the first of the group.
-If the host is ranked third or fourth, the host will qualify in addition to the first of the group.