AFCON 2025: CAF officially confirms postponement to December

All that was missing was the official word. After weeks of persistent rumours and a denial over the postponement of AFCON 2025, the Confederation of African Football confirmed on 21 June that its flagship tournament will be moved. Originally scheduled to be held in Morocco in the summer of 2025, the competition has been put back by 5 months and will now be played on unprecedented dates, straddling December and January, as reported by Sport News Africa.

Read also: AFCON 2025: CAF denies postponement... pending an announcement

On Friday, meeting by video conference, the CAF executive committee finally made the new AFCON 2025 dates official, after consultation with the Moroccan hosts. The tournament will now run from 21 December 2025 to 18 January 2026, an unprecedented window.

Protecting African players based in Europe

"Announcing the dates for AFCON 2025 took much longer than expected, because complex and at times difficult discussions took place with various stakeholders, in light of very crowded international and domestic fixture calendars. CAF is committed to protecting and advancing the interests of African players at football clubs in Europe and around the world", Patrice Motsepe said in a statement.

https://twitter.com/caf_online_FR/status/1804247439890641372

Since the comments from CAF's secretary general, citing a scheduling clash with the new format of the Club World Cup, postponing AFCON 2025 had become a foregone conclusion. But rather than going back to the usual January-February slot, CAF this time also took into account the new European competition formats, which will keep European clubs in action until mid-December, before they resume in the last week of January.

Women's AFCON also pushed back

"CAF is also committed to building mutually beneficial relationships with the ECA, UEFA, other football confederations and FIFA. We will continue to make significant progress in developing and ensuring that African football is competitive globally and among the best in the world ", the CAF president explained, further underlining the link between the postponement of AFCON 2025 and pressure from European clubs.

The postponement should have the merit of allowing all African players based in Europe, and still involved in competition there, to be available for the tournament, without hampering their clubs on the European stage or facing pressure from them. With matchday 6 of the league phase of the new-look UEFA Champions League finishing on 11 December and matchday 7 starting on 21 January, there will be a little over four weeks for AFCON 2025 to be played.

Another postponement has been announced, that of the Women's AFCON. Originally scheduled to be held in Morocco this year, the competition will now take place from 5 to 26 July 2025. As a reminder, the draw for the qualifiers for AFCON 2025, the men's edition, will be held on 4 July in Johannesburg.