Africa Cup of Nations

• 1. Introduction

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  The Africa Cup of Nations has produced at least one final that was decided twice. The first verdict came on the pitch. The second came from an appeal board. The tournament is known as AFCON in English and CAN in French, from Coupe d'Afrique des Nations. It is the main international men's football competition in Africa, and the Confederation of African Football, or CAF, sanctions it. Its official name currently carries a sponsor, as the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations. The competition dates to the 1950s, and its calendar is about to change yet again. How did an event that began with barely enough teams for a bracket grow into a summer-long showcase? Which nations built dynasties, and which ones lost their trophies to a rule about permanent ownership? What did a plane crash, a civil war and an epidemic do to the tournament? And what exactly happened in Rabat?

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• 2. Three Teams In Khartoum

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  In June 1956, delegates at the third FIFA congress in Lisbon heard a proposal to create the Confederation of African Football. Plans for a continental tournament followed almost at once. In February 1957, the first Africa Cup of Nations opened in Khartoum, Sudan. There was no qualifying. The field was drawn from the four founding members of CAF: Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and South Africa.

  South Africa insisted on selecting only white players because of its apartheid policy, and it was disqualified. That handed Ethiopia a bye straight into the final, so only two matches were played. Egypt beat the hosts Sudan 2-1 in the semi-final. Then Egypt beat Ethiopia 4-0 in the final and became the first continental champion.

  Two years later, Egypt hosted the second edition in Cairo with the same three teams. As host and defending champion, Egypt won again, beating Sudan 2-1 in the final.

  The 1962 tournament in Addis Ababa broke that pattern. Nine teams entered, and for the first time a qualifying round decided who would compete for the title. Host Ethiopia and reigning champion Egypt received automatic places. Nigeria and Tunisia joined them in the last four. Egypt reached a third consecutive final, but Ethiopia won the title, beating Tunisia and then Egypt in extra time.

  From that edition on, the competition has run in two phases, a qualifying phase and a final tournament, with the host always guaranteed a place. The early qualifiers were knockout ties. That system lasted until 1992, when the format moved closer to the European Championship. Groups of four to seven teams played each opponent home and away. The next new force to emerge was Ghana, which made its first appearance in 1963.

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• 3. Dynasties And Rivals

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  Ghana arrived in 1963 as host and won the title, beating Sudan in the final. Two years later in Tunisia, it won again with a squad that kept only two members of the earlier team. Ghana's third title came in 1978, making it the first nation to win three. Its fourth followed in 1982, when it beat host Libya on penalties after a 1-1 draw lasting 120 minutes. Between those wins, the Democratic Republic of Congo claimed its first title in 1968 by beating Ghana in the final.

  The 1970s spread the prizes widely. Six nations took titles between 1970 and 1980: Sudan, Congo-Brazzaville, Zaire, Morocco, Ghana and Nigeria. Sudan won as hosts in 1970, beating a Ghana side that was playing its fourth consecutive final. Morocco won its first title in 1976, in Ethiopia. Nigeria claimed its first in 1980, beating Algeria in the final as hosts.

  Cameroon then took over the story. It reached three finals in a row, winning in 1984 and 1988 and losing in 1986 on penalties to Egypt. Algeria was the other strong team of the decade. After 1980, it reached the semi-finals of every edition except 1986, and it finally won in 1990. Hosting that year, Algeria beat Nigeria 1-0 in the final.

  Cameroon returned in 2000. After a 2-2 draw with Nigeria in the final, it won on penalty kicks. In 2002, Cameroon won again, beating first-time finalists Senegal on penalties. That was the first back-to-back success since Ghana in the 1960s, and since Egypt in 1957 and 1959. Tunisia then won its first title as hosts in 2004, beating Morocco 2-1.

  Egypt, meanwhile, had beaten South Africa in 1998 for its fourth cup. Egypt won as hosts in 2006 for a fifth. In 2008 in Ghana, Egypt beat Cameroon 1-0 for a sixth. Then in Angola in 2010, it beat Ghana 1-0 for a third straight title, which no African nation had done before. That brought its total to seven, counting the years from 1958 to 1961 when Egypt competed as the United Arab Republic. Only Mexico, Argentina and Iran had managed three straight continental titles elsewhere. By the 31st of January 2010, Egypt had gone 19 Cup of Nations matches unbeaten, since a 2-1 loss to Algeria in Tunisia in 2004. It also set a record of nine consecutive wins.

  Egypt leads the table with seven titles, ahead of Cameroon with five and Ghana with four. Fifteen different countries have lifted the cup.

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• 4. Firsts And Records

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  Laurent Pokou, a forward from Ivory Coast, led the scoring charts in 1968 and 1970 with six and eight goals. His total of 14 stood as the all-time record until 2008. The 1970 edition in Sudan also brought the first television coverage of the tournament.

  The 1974 final between Zaire and Zambia is the only one ever replayed. The first match ended 2-2 after extra time. Two days later, Zaire won the re-staged final 2-0. Forward Mulamba Ndaye scored all four of Zaire's goals across the two matches. He also finished as top scorer with nine goals, a single-tournament record that has not been matched. Three months earlier, Zaire had become the first Sub-Saharan African nation to qualify for the FIFA World Cup.

  The 1992 tournament produced its own drama. Ghanaian midfielder Abedi "Pele" Ayew scored three goals and was named best player, yet he was suspended for the final. Without him, Ghana lost to Ivory Coast in a penalty shootout in which each side took 11 attempts. Ivory Coast had also held every opponent scoreless across its six matches, a competition record. Rashidi Yekini of Nigeria led the scoring in 1992 with four goals. In 1994 he topped the list again with five.

  South Africa returned in 1996. A decades-long ban had ended with apartheid, and a first attempt to qualify in 1994 had failed. As host, the country made its first ever appearance. Sixteen teams were meant to take part, but Nigeria withdrew at the last moment for political reasons, so only 15 played. Bafana Bafana won their first title at home, beating Tunisia in the final.

  At the 2021 tournament, Salima Mukansanga became the first woman to referee at the Africa Cup of Nations. She led an all-woman officiating team that also included Fatiha Jermoumi of Morocco, Carine Atemzabong of Cameroon and Bouchra Karboubi of Morocco. That tournament had a difficult road to reach her whistle.

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• 5. Shadows Over The Tournament

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  In 1993, most of Zambia's national squad died in a plane crash while travelling to a 1994 World Cup qualifying match. A year later, the rebuilt team reached the final of the Africa Cup of Nations and lost to Nigeria. The memory returned in 2012. Zambia met Ivory Coast in the final in Gabon, only a few hundred metres from the crash site. Zambia won on penalties, and the match drew intense media attention.

  Politics and war reshaped the schedule too. In 2000, Zimbabwe lost the hosting rights, and Ghana and Nigeria staged the edition together. In 2011, Libya won the right to host the 2013 tournament, but its civil war led Libya and South Africa to swap years. South Africa hosted in 2013, and Libya was given 2017. Continued fighting in Libya eventually moved the 2017 event to Gabon.

  Then came the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014-15. All football activity in Liberia was suspended. The Antoinette Tubman Stadium in Monrovia became an Ebola treatment unit. Morocco was due to host the 2015 edition but refused to stage it on the allotted dates because of the outbreak. The tournament moved to Equatorial Guinea.

  The COVID-19 pandemic followed. Match days 3 and 4 of the 2021 qualifiers, scheduled from the 25th to the 30th of March 2020, were postponed. The finals themselves, hosted by Cameroon, slipped to 2022. Senegal won that delayed edition for the first time, beating Egypt on penalties in the final. That result set up a much larger fight over Senegal's future finals.

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• 6. Calendar And Cash

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  Ahead of the 2008 tournament, several European clubs called for the schedule to be rethought. The event falls in the European season, and clubs lose players for matches. In January 2008, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said he wanted it moved to June or July by 2016. That timing would rule out many hosts in central and west Africa, where those months fall in the wet season.

  In May 2010, CAF announced a different change. From 2013, the tournament would be played in odd-numbered years, so it would no longer share a year with the World Cup. The switch meant two tournaments within twelve months, in January 2012, co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, and in January 2013, hosted by South Africa.

  Money arrived next. In July 2016, Total secured an eight-year sponsorship package covering 10 of CAF's principal competitions. It began with the 2017 edition in Gabon, renamed the Total Africa Cup of Nations. In July 2017, under CAF president Ahmad Ahmad, two more changes were approved. The tournament would move from January to the Northern Hemisphere summer, and it would grow from 16 teams to 24, starting in 2019.

  For decades, the finals used four groups of four teams, and the top two in each group went on to the knockout rounds. That field first reached 16 in 1998. Togo's withdrawal in 2010 left 15 teams, as Nigeria's had in 1996. The 24-team design uses six groups of four. Only the host qualifies automatically, and the other 23 teams come through qualifying. The top two in each group and the four best third-placed teams advance to a round of 16.

  Prize money rose along with the field. The 2019 winner, Algeria, received $4.5 million after beating Senegal 1-0, and the runner-up received $2.5 million. For the 2021 edition, the winner's prize rose to $5 million and the runner-up's to $2.75 million. The overall prize pool rose from US$7 million in 2023 to US$10 million in 2025.

  The summer plan did not always hold. The 2023 edition was played in January 2024, mainly because of the heat in host Ivory Coast. The 2025 edition, the 35th, ran from December 2025 into January 2026 because of the new quadrennial FIFA Club World Cup. On the 20th of December 2025, CAF announced another reset. The tournament will return to even-numbered years and become a quadrennial event, starting with 2028. An annual African Nations League is due to begin in 2029.

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• 7. Three Trophies

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  Three different trophies have gone to the winners over the years. The first was made of silver and named the Abdelaziz Abdallah Salem Trophy, after CAF's first president, an Egyptian. Ghana became the first nation to win three tournaments, and in 1978 it gained the right to keep the trophy permanently.

  The second prize was the Trophy of African Unity, also called the African Unity Cup. The Supreme Council for Sports in Africa gave it to CAF before the 1980 tournament. It was a cylinder with the Olympic rings over a map of the continent, set on a squared base with stylised triangular handles. It was awarded from 1980 to 2000. When Cameroon won its third title in 2000, it kept the cup for good.

  The third trophy was unveiled in 2001, a gold-plated cup designed and made in Italy. Cameroon, having just kept the previous trophy, was the first nation to receive the new one, after winning in 2002. Egypt's third title in 2010 meant it earned the gold-plated cup outright. But unlike earlier owners, Egypt did not take home the original. It was presented with a special full-size replica instead. Today, the winner of each edition gets a replica whose dimensions match the original.

  There are six post-tournament awards: Best Player, Top Goal-scorer, Best Goalkeeper, Best Young Player, Team of the Tournament and the Fair Play Award. CAF also hands out 30 gold medals to the winners, 30 silver to the runners-up and 30 bronze to the third-placed team. The team in fourth place receives 30 diplomas.

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• 8. The Rabat Verdict

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  On the 19th of January 2026, Senegal beat host nation Morocco 1-0 in the final at Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat. That seemed to close the 2025 edition. It did not. On the 17th of March 2026, CAF's appeal board overturned the result. Its reasoning was that the Senegal players had stormed off the pitch to forfeit the match, even though play later continued. The outcome was officially changed to a 3-0 win for Morocco.

  Senegal said it would appeal. On the 24th of March 2026, the Court of Arbitration for Sport stated that the Senegalese Football Federation had approached it, seeking to reverse the decision to strip the title. CAS Director General Matthieu Reeb said the appeal would be heard as swiftly as possible.

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