Rumours suggesting the postponement of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Morocco have been the talk around the continent for a couple of months.
Indeed the competition that was originally set for the summer of next year has been rescheduled for December 21, 2025, to January 18, 2026.
The above decision was made public knowledge in CAF’s virtual executive meeting held at its headquarters in Cairo, Egypt on Friday.
The continent’s football governing body’s move was influenced by FIFA’s newly expanded Club World Cup.
CAF have decided to push Africa’s greatest sports event further to avoid colliding with the 32-team FIFA competition set for June 15 to July 13, 2025, in the United States of America.
The dates for the qualification draw were earlier announced by the Confederation and will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa on July 4, 2024.
The 2025 AFCON qualifiers will be played between September and October 2024.
It will be the first time AFCON is played in December but the FIFA World Cup was already witnessed in a similar month in Qatar in 2022.
Ivory Coast are the holders after defeating Nigeria 2-1 in the final as hosts in January 2024.
The above competition was also initially supposed to be held in June 2023 but was postponed due to bad weather in Cote d’Ivoire during that period of the year.
The last time the Uganda Cranes featured at the AFCON was in 2019 in Egypt when they were eliminated by Senegal in the Round of 16.
If the Cranes qualify, they could be away from home when the next national presidential elections take centre stage in January 2026 but that also depends on how far they go in the competition.
We also wait to see where the postponement of AFCON 2025 leaves AFCON 2027 which is set for East Africa for the first time in history with Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, as co-hosts.
