✨ Explore this awesome post from BBC Sport 📖
📂 Category:
✅ Key idea:
The African Cup of Nations will be held between December 21, 2025 and January 18, 2026 in Morocco.
The 2025 edition was originally scheduled to be a mid-year tournament, to minimize scheduling conflicts with European clubs and competitions.
The summer event was supposed to boost tourism and highlight what Morocco has to offer, before the country co-hosts the 2030 World Cup with Spain and Portugal.
But it has been postponed to December to make way for an expanded FIFA Club World Cup, which will be held in the summer.
The move to start in December instead of January will avoid conflict with the Champions League and Europa League, which will resume on January 20 and 22 respectively.
This will be the first time the Africa Cup of Nations has been held at this time of the year, with matches taking place in Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakesh, Agadir, Tangier and Fez.
There will be no matches on December 25th.
The players participating in the Africa Cup of Nations were released from the clubs on 15 December.
This meant that teams only had one week to prepare before the tournament began, angering coaches who had only a short period left to prepare their teams.
Angola coach Patrice Baumel said the situation was “nonsense” and “you cannot prepare a serious team in just two or three sessions.”
The last time the Africa Cup of Nations was held in the summer was the 2019 edition, which was hosted by Egypt.
In recent years, the tournament has been held between January and February.
💬 What do you think?
#️⃣ #Africa #Cup #Nations #held #December #traditionally #winter #years
