AIPS ASIA News:

The 44 teams eyeing a place at the AFC U23 Asian Cup™ Saudi Arabia 2026 will discover their qualifying journey on Thursday, May 29 when the Qualifiers Draw takes place at 3pm.
 
The ceremony, to be held at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, will sort the cast into 11 groups to do battle for the Qualifiers, which will take place between September 1 and 9, 2025.
 
Fifteen berths are up for grabs at the seventh edition of the tournament, which will be hosted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the first time and is set to be played in January 2026.
 
Champions in 2022, Saudi Arabia have automatically qualified as hosts and will be joined by the 11 group winners from the Qualifiers as well as the overall four best-ranked runners-up.
 
Each Qualifiers group will be contested in a centralised league format and with teams to be seeded into five pots based on a points system derived from their final rankings across the previous three editions of the Finals. The points from each edition will be weighted progressively as follows:
 

• Latest edition (2024): 100% of ranking points
• 2nd last edition (2022): 50% of ranking points
• 3rd last edition (2020): 25% of ranking points

 
At the start of the draw, the teams that will serve as centralised hosts will be separately allocated to a Hosts Pot to ensure that they are drawn into different groups.
 
The pot allocations, with rankings indicated in brackets, are as follow:
 
Pot 1: Uzbekistan (1), Japan (2), Iraq (3), Korea Republic (5), Australia (7)
Pot 2: Kuwait (14), Islamic Republic of Iran (15), Turkmenistan (16), Malaysia (17), Bahrain (19), Palestine (20), Syria (21), Yemen (22)
Pot 3: Oman (25), Singapore (26), India (28), Lebanon (29), Laos (30), Timor-Leste (31), Chinese Taipei (32), Philippines (33), Hong Kong, China (34)
Pot 4: Afghanistan (35), Bangladesh (36), Mongolia (37), Guam (39), Pakistan (41), Macau (42), Nepal (43), Brunei Darussalam (44), Sri Lanka (45), Bhutan (46), Northern Mariana Islands (47)
Hosts Pot: Vietnam (6; Seed: 1), Qatar (8;1), Thailand (9;1), Jordan (10;1), Tajikistan (11;1), United Arab Emirates (12;1), Indonesia (13;2), China PR (18;2), Cambodia (23;2), Myanmar (24;3), Kyrgyz Republic (27;3)

Courtesy AFC