The Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) will be expanded to 28 teams from 2027, Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Patrice Motsepe has confirmed, in one of the biggest format changes in the tournament’s history.
The enlarged competition will debut at the 2027 finals, to be co-hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania from 19 June to 17 July.
Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg on Wednesday, Motsepe said: “Nous avons augmente le nombre de participants a la prochaine edition de la CAN.”
(“We have increased the number of participants for the next edition of the AFCON.”)
The move means four additional teams will take part compared with the 24-nation tournament format used in recent editions, including the last AFCON staged in Morocco.
Qualification questions as new format looms
With qualifiers scheduled to begin in September, attention is now turning to how the expanded 28-team line-up will be decided – and how the tournament itself will be structured.
CAF has yet to officially publish the qualification regulations for the new format. However, with time tight before the qualifying campaign starts after the summer, there is growing expectation that the confederation will soon “lift the veil” on the new system.
Speculation across African football suggests that the qualifying phase could broadly mirror the previous structure, but with extra berths to accommodate the expansion. Under one widely discussed scenario, the top two sides in each qualifying group would progress, alongside the best third-placed teams, who would join the three co-host nations – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania – already assured of their spots at the finals.
Seven groups and streamlined last 16 under consideration
At the final tournament itself, a 28-team AFCON would likely see a reconfiguration of the group stage.
One leading proposal would create seven groups of four teams, instead of the six groups used at the most recent 24-team edition. Each group would play a round-robin mini-league.
In that model, the top two teams from each of the seven groups would reach the last 16, joined by the two best third-placed sides. That would deliver 16 qualifiers for the knockout phase, with the remaining 12 teams eliminated after the group stage.
This system would mark a slight tightening compared with the last AFCON, when four of the best third-placed teams advanced to the knockouts. Reducing that number to two would increase jeopardy during the group stage and could make the battle for qualification more intense.
Although CAF has not officially endorsed this specific configuration, it aligns with formats already circulating among analysts and fans, including versions shared widely on social media outlining how a 28-team tournament could feed into a standard 16-team knockout bracket.
Strategic expansion amid AFCON’s rising profile
The decision to expand is the latest signal of AFCON’s growing stature and commercial appeal, following recent high-profile tournaments and the increasing global influence of African players.
By adding four extra slots, CAF will open the door to more emerging national teams, potentially spreading hosting and development benefits more widely across the continent. However, the change also raises logistical and scheduling challenges, particularly around club-versus-country tensions and calendar congestion.
Motsepe has repeatedly positioned AFCON as a key driver for African football’s growth, and the 2027 edition in East Africa – the first time the region has jointly staged the competition on this scale – is being viewed as a flagship test of CAF’s ambitions.
With the clock ticking down to June 2027, federations and fans are now waiting on CAF’s formal confirmation of the qualification rules and final-tournament format that will define this new 28-team era for Africa’s premier football competition.
