The Africa Cup of Nations will be played every two years again. The Confederation of African Football announced in December that it was moving the tournament to a four-year cycle, and after a review it has reversed that decision.
The replacement tournament did not add up
Caf's plan was to fill the gap with an African Nations League, which would have become the biennial competition while Afcon moved to every fourth year. The review found the obvious problem. A new tournament would take several years to generate enough revenue to stand on its own, and Caf acknowledged as much.
Patrice Motsepe framed the U-turn around the people it affects. "The decision by the Executive Committee to reinstate the organisation of the Afcon every two years aims to advance, protect and promote the interests of African football and the 54 Caf Member Associations, as well as those of African players playing for clubs outside the continent," the Caf president said in a statement.
The calendar problem has not gone anywhere
Holding Afcon every two years is what African football wants. It is also the reason the tournament keeps landing in the middle of the European club season, which is where most of the continent's best players earn their living, and where the arguments about release dates come from every single cycle.
This year's expanded 32-team Club World Cup, played in June and July, squeezed the summer further and pushed Caf towards mid-season dates again. Reversing the four-year plan restores what supporters and players wanted, but it does nothing to solve the thing that made the four-year plan attractive to administrators in the first place. That fight will be back.
What is scheduled now
The next Afcon is in 2027, hosted jointly by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. After that come 2028, then 2031 and 2033, with no tournament in 2030 because of the World Cup. So the biennial rhythm returns with one gap built in.
It arrives with the last edition still unresolved in the memory. Senegal were crowned champions of Afcon 2025 before being stripped of the title three months later in favour of Morocco, a sequence that did more damage to the competition's standing than any scheduling row. Caf has given itself the format it wanted. Restoring confidence in the result at the end of it is a separate job.
Competition context: Caf announced the move to a four-year Afcon cycle in December and has now reversed it after a review. The planned African Nations League was acknowledged to need several years to become self-sufficient. Editions are scheduled for 2027 (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), 2028, 2031 and 2033, with none in 2030 because of the World Cup. Caf has 54 member associations.
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