The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has identified 23 teams participating in the 2027 Asian Cup, including: Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Iran, Australia, South Korea, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan, UAE, Oman, Syria, Bahrain, China, Palestine, Kyrgyzstan, North Korea, Indonesia, Kuwait, Singapore, Thailand, Tajikistan.
Currently, the final spot in the final round has not been determined. In Group B, the ticket to the next round will belong to one of the two teams, Lebanon and Yemen.
Notably, the decisive match between Lebanon and Yemen in the final round of the qualifiers, initially scheduled to take place on March 31 in Doha (Qatar), was postponed to June 2026 due to security issues.
Initially, AFC planned to hold a draw on April 11, with the division of seed groups based on the FIFA rankings for April 2026. The draw will be postponed to June 2026, but with most Asian teams not playing any international matches until next June, the rankings of the teams are unlikely to fluctuate much.
According to classification based on the FIFA rankings in April 2026, the Vietnamese team with a position in the Top 100 in the world is in the 3rd seed group along with Thailand, Bahrain, China, Palestine and Tajikistan.
Group 2 includes Qatar, Iraq, Jordan, UAE, Oman, Syria teams. Meanwhile, group 1 gathers the strongest teams in Asia such as Japan, Iran, South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. These are also the teams that will participate in the 2026 World Cup.
Group 4 brings together teams including Kyrgyzstan, North Korea, Indonesia, Kuwait, Singapore and Lebanon or Yemen.
According to the draw principle, each group will have 4 teams from 4 different seed groups. Accordingly, the Vietnamese team may be in a very heavy group with the Japan, Iraq and Indonesia teams. Among these, the Indonesian team is currently ranked 119th in the world, but they have defeated the Vietnamese team in the two most recent encounters in the 2nd round of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers.
Meanwhile, Japan and Iraq have both regularly overcome Vietnam in recent encounters. At the 2023 Asian Cup, Vietnam was in the same group as these 3 teams and lost all 3 matches.
In theory and based on the FIFA rankings, the lightest group of Vietnam at the upcoming 2027 Asian Cup is with Uzbekistan, Syria and Yemen - if this team wins a ticket to the next round.
