African Cup of Nations 2025 has been postponed

0 Darko D. David June 23, 2024

Organizers of 2025 African Cup of Nations, AFCON, have announced that the tournament will be delayed by six months, as it clashes with the expanded 32-team Club World Cup.

AFCON 2025 to be played in Morocco, was originally scheduled to take place in June, but the Club World Cup is set to played in the United States from June 15 to July 13, the summer of 2025.

In view of that, the tournament has been rescheduled by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to take place from December 21, 2025, to January 18, 2026 according to africanews.

CAF’s general secretary, Veron Mosengo-Omba, previously told BBC in an interview that AFCON would be held in early 2026, acknowledging the pressing issue of scheduling conflicts.

Mosengo-Omba highlighted concerns regarding player welfare, questioning the feasibility of players participating in both the Club World Cup and the AFCON consecutively.

“For the men, we need to make sure that the dates that we’ll be choosing will be in the interests of the players.

“For this, we need to balance different aspects and also discuss with our partners and then we complete [the dates]. Scheduling is a nightmare for everybody,” Mosengo-Omba said.

After the announcement of dates for the FIFA Club World Cup, the decisions on the dates for CAF TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations (“AFCON”) Morocco 2025 and CAF TotalEnergies Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (“WAFCON”) 2024 was made and CAF online page on X published on June 21. WAFCON will begin on July 5, 2025 and end on July 26, 2025 whiles the men's competition begins December 21, 2025.

This will mark the third consecutive edition of the tournament to be postponed, following the CAN 2021 in Cameroon and the CAN 2023 in Côte d'Ivoire.

The recent delayed 2023 Afcon finals took place early this year in Cote d’lvoire. The Elephants made a host and win record after beating the Super Eagles of Nigeria 2-1.