AFC U23 Asian Cup Qualifiers Draw Set For May 29

Umer Jamshaid Published May 22, 2025 | 01:16 PM

KUALA LUMPUR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 22nd May, 2025) The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) announced today that the official AFC U23 Asian Cup™ Saudi Arabia 2026 Qualifiers Draw will take place on Thursday, 29th May, at 3 pm local time in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the AFC House.

A total of 44 teams will be sorted into 11 groups to do battle for the Qualifiers, which will take place between 1st and 9th September 2025.

Fifteen berths are up for grabs at the seventh edition of the tournament, which will be hosted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the first time and is set to be played in January 2026.

Champions in 2022, Saudi Arabia, have automatically qualified as hosts and will be joined by the 11 group winners from the Qualifiers, as well as the overall four best-ranked runners-up.

Each Qualifiers group will be contested in a centralised league format and with teams to be seeded into five pots based on a points system derived from their final rankings across the previous three editions of the Finals.

At the start of the draw, the teams that will serve as centralised hosts will be separately allocated to a Hosts Pot to ensure they are drawn into different groups.

The Hosts Pot includes: United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Qatar, Thailand, Jordan, Tajikistan, Indonesia, China, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan.