2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers: Super Eagles know Africa qualification group format

By Oyediji Oluwaseun Babatunde

The new format for the 2026 Expanded FIFA World Cup Qualifiers for Africa has been revealed with the Nigeria senior national team in the fray.

The next World Cup will be an expanded tournament with Africa getting nine automatic tickets after the upcoming edition will be the first to include 48 teams, expanded from 32.

During Thursday’s Confederation of African Football (CAF) Executive Committee meeting held in Algiers on May 18, major decisions on the Qualifiers were taken.

The African ruling body resolved that there would be nine groups of six teams for the qualifying series, with the top teams from each group to automatically qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The best second-placed teams from the nine groups will play a playoff spot with teams from CONCACAF (Central America and Caribbean) zone.

In 2022, five African teams automatically qualified for the World Cup from the previous format, with 32 teams in Qatar, where Nigeria were missing following a final playoff defeat to West African neighbours, Ghana.

Depending on the groupings, the Super Eagles will be eyeing one of the six tickets to guarantee their return to the World Cup after Qatar 2022 miss.

Based on CAF schedule,  the qualifying tournament begin with the first and second round from 3-21 Nov 2023 and the third and fourth set for 3-11 Jun 2024 and followed by the fifth and sixth round from 17-25 Mar 2025.

From 1-9 Sep 2025, the seventh and eighth round FIFA WC 2026 before the ninth and tenth from 6-14 Oct 2025 and final playoff tournament from 10-18 Nov 2025 before the FIFA play-off tournament in March 26.

The West Africans had featured at six of the last eight FIFA Word Cups in 1994, 1998, 2002, 2010, 2014, and 2018 but failed to qualify for Germany 2006 and Qatar 2022 World Cups.