Twelve national teams will be involved in the first stage of the AFCON 2027 qualifiers draw, before the majority of African nations enter the competition.
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) will hold the draw for the preliminary round of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, in Rabat.
This draw will officially kick off the qualification process for the final phase of AFCON 2027, which will be co-hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Twelve teams will take part in this preliminary round, involving the lowest-ranked national teams in the latest FIFA rankings.
The remaining 42 nations are directly qualified for the group stage of the qualifiers. The teams concerned are: Lesotho, Burundi, Ethiopia, Eswatini, South Sudan, Mauritius, Chad, São Tomé and Príncipe, Djibouti, Somalia, Seychelles and Eritrea. They will be split into two pots of six teams each.
Teams from Pot 1 will face those from Pot 2 in home-and-away fixtures.
The first leg will be played on the ground of the lower-ranked team.
The draw format stipulates that each team from Pot 1 will be paired with a team from Pot 2.
At the end of this phase, the six winners will join the 42 teams already qualified for the next stage of the AFCON 2027 qualifiers.
