The CAF Africa Cup of Nations

AFCON is contested by national teams from across Africa, all of which belong to CAF. The tournament has been held every two years for most of its history, although CAF has announced plans to move it to a four-year cycle after 2028. The matches are usually spread across four weeks in one host country, although some editions are co-hosted.

The competition began in 1957 with just three teams — Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan — and has expanded steadily since. It now features 24 teams in the finals, with qualifying campaigns that span every member of the confederation. CAF has also announced plans to expand the finals to 28 teams in future, although the exact format has not yet been set out.

Under the recent 24-team format, the finals begin with six groups of four teams, each playing the other three in their group once. The top two teams from every group go through to the round of 16, joined by the four best third-placed teams. From the round of 16 onwards the tournament is straight knockout — round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, third-place play-off and final.

Extra time and penalty shoot-outs are used to settle knockout matches that are level after 90 minutes. The 24-team format has been in place since 2019; before that the finals featured 16 teams from 1996 onwards, and smaller numbers in the earlier years of the competition. CAF has announced plans for a 28-team finals, but the detailed structure of that expanded format has not yet been confirmed.

For most of its history AFCON was held in even-numbered years, but in 2013 CAF moved the tournament to odd-numbered years so it would not coincide with the World Cup. The change helped separate Africa's continental championship from the main World Cup cycle.

CAF moved the 2019 edition to June and July, but later tournaments have returned to January, February or December-January dates for different reasons, including COVID disruption, local climate and clashes with other competitions. The 2023 edition was played in January and February 2024, while the 2025 edition was scheduled for December 2025 to January 2026. The 2027 tournament is due to be co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, with another edition planned for 2028 before the move to a four-year cycle.

CAF runs a qualifying competition in the two years before each tournament. Teams are placed into groups and play each other home and away, with the top finishers in each group going through to the finals. The host nation qualifies automatically. The exact number of teams that progress from each qualifying group depends on the size of the finals field.

In recent qualifying cycles, the African qualifying campaign for the World Cup has run separately from AFCON qualifying, although the two campaigns overlap in their international windows. From 2026 the World Cup qualifying field has grown to nine direct slots for African teams, with a tenth available through an inter-confederation play-off.

There is no formal qualification path linked to AFCON in the way the Nations League can link to Euros qualifying. AFCON results can affect a team's FIFA ranking, and FIFA rankings are often used by CAF when seeding future draws, but winning AFCON does not normally qualify a team directly for the World Cup or another senior men's finals.

For a long time the AFCON winner used to qualify for the FIFA Confederations Cup — a tournament for continental champions plus the World Cup host — but that competition was discontinued after the 2017 edition and has not been replaced in the same form.

The first Africa Cup of Nations was held in Sudan in 1957, organised by the newly formed Confederation of African Football. South Africa had been due to take part but was excluded because of its apartheid policies, leaving Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to contest the inaugural tournament. Egypt won the final 4–0 against Ethiopia.

The competition grew with the confederation. The number of teams in the finals expanded from three to eight in 1968, then to twelve in 1992, sixteen in 1996, and twenty-four in 2019. Each expansion brought more African nations into the tournament and broadened its appeal across the continent.

The Women's Africa Cup of Nations is the senior women's equivalent and serves as African qualifying for the Women's World Cup. CAF also runs age-group Africa Cup of Nations tournaments, including men's and women's youth competitions. The senior men's tournament remains the most-watched African football competition.