With 24 places at the finals and more than 50 CAF members, most African nations have to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations. Here is how the qualifying competition is usually organised.
Preliminary round
The lowest-ranked teams, based on the FIFA ranking, play a two-legged preliminary round. The winners join the group stage. For small nations such as Djibouti, Somalia or South Sudan, this round is often their first competitive test of the cycle.
Group stage
In recent editions, 48 teams have been drawn into 12 groups of four, seeded using the FIFA ranking. Each team plays the others home and away over six matchdays during FIFA's international windows. The top two teams in each group qualify for the finals. When the hosts are in a group, they already have a place and only the best other team or teams qualify from it.
The hosts
The host country traditionally qualifies automatically, but it is often still drawn into a qualifying group so that it gets competitive matches. Co-hosted editions, such as 2027 in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, follow special rules set by CAF for each tournament, so check the regulations of the edition you are following.
Neutral venues
If a country's stadium does not meet CAF standards, it must play its "home" qualifiers in another country. That is a real disadvantage for smaller nations and one reason stadium projects, such as Juba National Stadium, matter so much.
Tie-breakers
When teams finish level on points, head-to-head results usually decide the order before overall goal difference. See tie-breakers explained.
Follow the qualifiers
All AFCON qualifiers are listed on our fixtures page with previews and win probabilities. Each team's full qualifying record is on its tournament page, for example Nigeria in AFCON qualification. For the history of the finals, read AFCON history.