Nigeria, a team with three-time championships and five-time runners-up, is eagerly anticipating Thursday’s announcement of their opponents for the AFCON2025Draw, the qualification race for the 35th Africa Cup of Nations finals.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the draw for the AFCON 2025 will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ademola Olajire, the Director of Communications at the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), announced this from Abuja on Tuesday.
The draw will happen at the SuperSport studio, located in Johannesburg, the commercial hub of South Africa. It will involve 48 countries organized into 12 groups of four teams each. From these groups, the top two teams from eleven groups will secure direct qualification for the finals scheduled from December 21, 2025, to January 18, 2026.
In the twelfth group, which includes the host nation Morocco, Morocco will automatically advance to the finals regardless of their finishing position, alongside one other team from their group.
Qualifying matches are scheduled to occur during the FIFA windows in September, October, and November of this year. Nigeria’s current opponents in the ongoing 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying series—Benin Republic, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—will all participate in Thursday’s AFCON2025Draw.
The draw will feature all 48 teams, divided into four pots:
- Pot 1: Morocco, Senegal, Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon, Mali, South Africa, DR Congo, Ghana
- Pot 2: Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Benin Republic, Angola, Uganda, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar
- Pot 3: Kenya, Mauritania, Congo, Tanzania, Guinea Bissau, Libya, Comoros, Togo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Central African Republic
- Pot 4: Niger Republic, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, The Gambia, Burundi, Liberia, Ethiopia, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, South Sudan, Chad
The draw is highly anticipated as it will determine the path for Nigeria and other teams towards qualifying for AFCON 2025.