According to the announcement of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the draw for the 2026 AFC U23 Championship Finals will be held at 2:00 p.m. on October 2, 2025 (Vietnam time) at the AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
According to the principle of seed arrangement, Saudi Arabia as the host is defaulted in seed group 1. The remaining 15 teams are divided into 4 groups based on their performance in the last 3 finals, with the corresponding scoring coefficient: 100% for the 2024 tournament, 50% for the 2022 tournament and 25% for the 2020 tournament.
Specifically, seed groups are identified as follows:
Group 1: Saudi Arabia (host), Uzbekistan (ranked 1), Japan (ranked 2), Iraq (ranked 3).
Group 2: Korea (5th), Vietnam (6th), Australia (7th), Qatar (8th).
Group 3: Thailand (9th), Jordan (10th), UAE (11th), Iran highly ranked,...
Group 4: China (ranked 13th), Syria (ranked 14th), Kyrgyzstan (ranked 15th), Lebanon (ranked 16th).
According to the competition format, the 16 teams participating in the final round will be divided into 4 groups. The top two teams in each group will qualify for the quarter-finals. The final match of the tournament is scheduled to take place on January 25, 2026.
To create the qualifiers, U23 Vietnam won all three matches, defeating U23 Bangladesh 2-0, U23 Singapore 1-0 and U23 Yemen 1-0 to win the top spot in the group with 9 absolute points.
This is the sixth consecutive time U23 Vietnam has participated in the U23 Asian Cup finals, continuing to affirm its stable position in the continental arena and bringing great expectations to fans in the upcoming journey in Saudi Arabia.
The 2026 U23 Asian Cup finals will take place from January 7 to January 25, 2026.
