emirates7 - The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has announced that the official draw for the AFC U23 Asian Cup Saudi Arabia 2026 Qualifiers will be held on Thursday, 29 May at 3:00 PM local time in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the AFC House.

A total of 44 national teams will be drawn into 11 groups to compete in the Qualifiers, scheduled to run from 1 to 9 September 2025.

The upcoming tournament, marking its seventh edition, will be hosted by Saudi Arabia for the first time and is set to take place in January 2026. As the reigning 2022 champions and hosts, Saudi Arabia automatically qualifies for the final tournament. They will be joined by the 11 group winners from the Qualifiers and the four best-performing runners-up.

The Qualifiers will follow a centralised round-robin format, with group seeding based on a points system calculated from team performances in the past three editions of the tournament.

Before the main draw, teams that will host the Qualifiers in a centralised format will be placed in a separate Hosts Pot to ensure they are distributed into different groups.

The Hosts Pot features the following countries: United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Qatar, Thailand, Jordan, Tajikistan, Indonesia, China, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Kyrgyzstan.