According to a notice from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), U20 Vietnam is in the No. 2 seed group along with U20 Qatar, U20 Indonesia, U20 Syria, U20 Thailand, U20 Yemen, U20 Kyrgyzstan and U20 Tajikistan.
This is the first time AFC has applied a two-level competition format including the qualifying phase (Qualification Phase) and the development phase (Development Phase).
In which, 32 teams with the highest rankings in Asia will compete in the qualifying stage, divided into 8 groups, each group of 4 teams competing in a single round-robin to calculate points.
U20 Vietnam participated in the qualifying stage thanks to being ranked 14th seed in Asia by AFC, based on achievements at the 2023, 2025 AFC U20 Championship and the 2018 AFC U19 Championship.
In addition, Vietnam was also selected as one of the 8 countries hosting the qualifying rounds, along with Bahrain, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Qatar, Thailand and Uzbekistan.
According to the draw principle, the home teams are separated so as not to be in the same group. Because they belong to the No. 2 seed group, U20 Vietnam will be ranked No. 2 in their group.
According to the tournament format, the top 8 teams in the groups and 7 second-placed teams with the best results will win the right to participate in the 2027 AFC U20 Championship finals.
Meanwhile, the 6 bottom-ranked teams with the lowest performance in the qualifying stage will be relegated to compete in the development stage in the next cycle.
The 2027 AFC U20 Championship qualifiers are scheduled to take place from August 31st to September 6th, 2026. The core force of Vietnam U20 will be players from the Vietnam U19 team who are being prepared and fought through international tournaments in 2026.
