Africa World Cup qualifiers 2026: Draw, groups, seeds, schedule, results for FIFA tournament in North America
Despite appearing to be a long way off in the distance, the path to the 2026 FIFA World Cup will begin for certain national sides in 2023, with the African (CAF) qualification campaign kicking off in November 2023.
The 2026 tournament will break new ground as a tri-hosted version of the competition, with the USA, Canada and Mexico all staging games, and Africa's major powers will be hoping to make an impact.
After Morocco made history by becoming the first African side to reach the semifinals in 2022, there is renewed hope of barriers being broken and challenges being laid down to rivals in Europe and South America.
Morocco are currently the highest-ranked African team with other World Cup regulars including Senegal and Tunisia also in the qualification mix for 2026.
When does 2026 World Cup qualifying start?
The CAF World Cup 2026 qualifying draw is scheduled to take place on Thursday, 13 July in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire at 4 p.m. BST / 11 a.m. ET.
The draw will be available to live stream on CAF's social media platforms and CAFONLINE.com.
Ahead of the draw, CAF have divided all 54 qualifying hopefuls into six seeding pots, each containing nine teams.
Seeding per pot is based on FIFA ranking at the end of June 2023, with the top-nine-ranked African nations placed into Pot 1, with those ranked 10-18 amongst African nations in Pot 2, and so on.
One team will be drawn from each pot and placed into a qualifying group (A-I) with only one team per pot included in each group.
Below are the seeding pots with FIFA rank in brackets, as of July 13, 2023.
The CAF World Cup qualifying groups will be divided into nine, from A to I, with the top team from each group at the end of qualification receiving an automatic spot at the 2026 World Cup.
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