The journey to the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) officially gets underway on Wednesday with the draw for the Preliminary Round of the qualifiers.
The 2027 edition of the continent’s flagship football tournament will be co-hosted by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, marking a historic joint hosting in East Africa.
A total of 12 lowest-ranked teams on the FIFA rankings will compete in the preliminary phase for six available spots in the group stage of the qualifiers, where 42 higher-ranked African nations have already secured automatic places.
According to the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the teams have been divided into two pots for the draw.
Pot 1 consists of Lesotho, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eswatini, South Sudan, and Mauritius, while Pot 2 includes Chad, São Tomé & Príncipe, Djibouti, Somalia, Seychelles, and Eritrea.
Each team from Pot 1 will be paired against a team from Pot 2, with the lower-ranked side hosting the first leg of the two-legged ties.
The six winners from the Preliminary Round will advance to the Group Stage draw of the AFCON 2027 qualifiers, where they will join Africa’s top 42 nations in the race for qualification.
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