Hosts Of AFCON 2025 And 2027 To Be Announced This Month

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) announced on Thursday that the eagerly anticipated decision about the hosts for the African Cup of Nations finals in 2025 and 2027 will be made later this month.

According to a release, the hosts would be revealed during a CAF executive committee meeting on September 27 in Cairo.

Since CAF stripped Guinea of the right to host the 2025 finals in October of last year and then revealed it would also award the hosting of the 2027 finals at the same time, the two decisions have been keenly anticipated for almost a year.

Guinea lost the 2025 competition because CAF discovered it was far behind schedule in getting ready for the 24-team competition.

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At the same time, CAF declared they will reopen the bidding process and would make a choice in early 2023 but they have repeatedly put off a decision.

The deadline for declarations of interest was extended to April when CAF said they had received bids from Algeria, Morocco, and Zambia, plus a co-hosting bid from Benin and Nigeria, for the 2025 finals and from Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, and a joint candidacy from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda for 2027.

The long-standing political rivalry between neighbours Algeria and Morocco has made the process difficult for CAF, sources in the executive committee have told Reuters.

But with Morocco bidding for only one of the two tournaments, a compromise has been engineered with the door open for it to be awarded the 2025 finals and Algeria the 2027 event.

CAF has sent evaluation teams to all bidding countries, appointing an independent assessor to oversee the inspections although the decision on the hosts will be made by the CAF executive committee.

The hosting of the Cup of Nations has run through a chequered history in the last decade, starting with South Africa stepping in to replace war-torn Libya in 2013.

In 2014 Guinea was awarded the right to host the 2023 finals, along with Cameroon (2019) and Ivory Coast (2021).

But Cameroon was declared not ready for the 2019 finals, so Egypt stepped in. Cameroon then hosted the 2021 edition, delayed for a year by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ivory Coast was supposed to host the 2023 event in June but it was postponed for six months because of concerns over the rainy season in West Africa.