What You Need To Know About FIFA World Cup 2026 African Qualifiers Draw
The FIFA World Cup 2026 African Qualifiers draw will be conducted on Thursday evening (today) in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
The 54 CAF nations will be seeded in six pots and then drawn into nine groups, each consisting of six teams.
The nine groups will play in a home and away, round-robin, format with each of the group winners qualifying automatically for the FIFA World Cup 2026 finals.
The four best group runners-up will then compete in a play-off stage to determine CAF’s representative at the FIFA playoff tournament.
The FIFA play-off tournament will feature one team from each of FIFA’s six confederations, except UEFA, plus one additional team from the host confederation (CONCACAF).
Two of the six teams will be seeded based on the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking. The seeded teams will play for a FIFA World Cup berth against the winners of the first two knockout games involving the four unseeded teams.
The qualifying matches will take place over ten matchdays during the next two years: 13-21 November 2023; 3-11 June 2024; 17-25 March 2025; 1-9 September 2025; 6-14 October 2025; 10-18 November 2025 (Play-offs).
Zimbabwe are in Pot 4 of the 54-team draw along with Mozambique, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Tanzania, Central African Republic, Malawi and Libya.
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