2026 AFC U-17 Asian Cup

The 2026 AFC U-17 Asian Cup will be the 21st edition of the AFC U-17 Asian Cup (including previous editions of the AFC U-17 Championship and AFC U-16 Championship), the annual international youth football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the men's under-17 national teams of Asia. It will be the second of four consecutive AFC U-17 Asian Cup held in Saudi Arabia, succeeding the 2025 preceding the 2027 and 2028.

The top eight teams of the tournament will qualify for the 2026 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar as the AFC representatives. Uzbekistan are the defending champions.

The host country of the 2026 U-17 World Cup (Qatar) and the top eight teams of the previous tournament in 2025 (including host Saudi Arabia) qualified automatically, while the other seven teams will be decided by qualification. There will be one round of qualification matches, which will be held between 22–30 November.

The following sixteen teams qualified for the tournament:

To be comfirmed.

The group winners and runners-up advanced to the quarter-finals and qualified for the 2026 FIFA U-17 World Cup.

Tiebreakers

Teams were ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tie-breaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings:^[1]

1. Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
2. Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
3. Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
4. If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
5. Goal difference in all group matches;
6. Goals scored in all group matches;
7. Penalty shoot-out if only two teams were tied and they met in the last round of the group;
8. Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
9. Drawing of lots.

All match times are in local time, SAST (UTC+3).

The following nine teams from AFC qualify for the 2026 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar; Qatar automatically qualified as the hosts.

¹ Bold indicates champions for that year. Italic indicates hosts for that year.

• 2026 AFC U-23 Asian Cup

• AFC U17 Asian Cup at the-AFC.com