2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualification

The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualification matches will be organized by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to decide the participating teams of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, the 34th edition of the international men's football championship of Africa. A total of 24 teams will qualify to play in the final tournament, including Ivory Coast, who qualify automatically as hosts.

Seeding[]

The seeding was based on the FIFA World Ranking from 23 December 2021. The teams ranked 1st to 42nd received a bye to the qualifying group stage, while the teams ranked 43rd to 54th had to participate in the preliminary round.^[1]

The preliminary round draw took place on 21 January 2022, 16:30 WAT (UTC+1), in Douala, Cameroon.^[2]

Schedule[]

The schedule of the qualifying tournament is as follows.

Preliminary round[]

The twelve lowest-ranked teams were drawn into six ties to be played in home-and-away two-legged format.^[4] The six winners advanced to the group stage to join the 42 teams which enter directly.

Team 1	Agg.	Team 2	1st leg	2nd leg
Eritrea	awd.	Botswana	Cancelled	Cancelled
São Tomé and Príncipe	4–3	Mauritius	1–0	3–3
Djibouti	2–5	South Sudan	2–4	0–1
Seychelles	1–3	Lesotho	0–0	1–3
Somalia	1–5	Eswatini	0–3	1–2
Chad	2–3	Gambia	0–1	2–2

Group stage[]

The date and seedings for the group stage have yet to be announced. The 48 teams will be drawn into twelve groups of four teams (from Group A to Group L). Groups will consist of the 42 teams which enter directly, in addition to the six winners of the preliminary round.

The 2023 Africa Cup of Nations hosts, Ivory Coast, will participate in the qualifiers with the team guaranteed a spot in the finals regardless of its ranking in the group. Their matches and results will count in determining the qualification of the other teams from their group. If Ivory Coast fail to finish in the top two of their group, the worst-ranked team among the group runners-up will not qualify for the final tournament.

Seedings^{[citation needed]}

Tiebreakers

The teams are ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss). If tied on points, tiebreakers are applied in the following order (Regulations Article 14):

1. Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
2. Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
3. Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
4. Away goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
5. If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above will be reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
6. Goal difference in all group matches;
7. Goals scored in all group matches;
8. Away goals scored in all group matches;
9. Drawing of lots.

Qualified teams[]

The following teams have qualified for the final tournament.

Team	Qualified as	Qualified on	Previous appearances in Africa Cup of Nations1
Ivory Coast	Hosts	8 January 2019	24 (1965, 1968, 1970, 1974, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021)

¹ Bold indicates champions for that year. Italics indicates hosts for that year.

Notes[]

References[]