The 2026 U23 Asian qualifiers will gather 44 national U23 teams, divided into 11 groups, competing in a round-robin format at the concentrated location from September 1 to September 9, 2025.
The 11 group winners and the 4 best second-placed teams will qualify for the finals, held in Saudi Arabia in 2026. The home team of the final round is specially entered directly without having to participate in the qualifying round.
Notably, U23 Vietnam is ranked in seed group No. 1 - a group for 11 teams with the best accumulated results in the last 3 U23 Asian tournaments (2020, 2022, 2024).
Being in the top seed group reflects the fairly stable competition results of Vietnamese youth football over the years, most recently the achievement of reaching the quarter-finals at the 2024 tournament.
On the rankings to serve the seed groups and draw for the 2026 U23 Asian qualifiers, the U23 Vietnam team is in 5th place in Asia, after Uzbekistan, Japan, Iraq and South Korea.
The draw mechanism is conducted according to the principle: the teams are divided into 4 seed groups based on the scoring system approved by AFC.
In addition, the 11 host countries are put into a separate group (Hosts Pot) and drawn in advance to ensure each host is in a different group. The home teams will be divided into groups corresponding to their seed groups.
The draw for the 2026 U23 Asian qualifiers will take place at 2:00 p.m. (Vietnam time) on May 29 at the AFC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia).
List of 11 countries hosting the tournament (in alphabet order): Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Qatar, Tajikistan, Thailand, UAE and Vietnam.
List of 4 seed groups (in order of ranking):
Group 1: Uzbekistan, Japan, Iraq, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, Qatar, Thailand, Jordan, Tajikistan, UAE.
Group 2: Indonesia, Kuwait, Iran, Turkmenistan, Malaysia, China, Bahrain, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Cambodia.
Group 3: Myanmar, Oman, Singapore, Kyrgyzstan, India, Lebanon, Laos, Timor Leste, Taiwan (China), Philippines, Hong Kong (China).
Group 4: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Guam, Pakistan, Macau (China), Nepal, Brunei, Bhutan, Northern Mariana Islands.
