In December, Patrice Motsepe called the four-year plan ‘the most exciting new structure for African football’. On Thursday, his own executive committee scrapped it.
The Confederation of African Football confirmed that the AFCON two-year cycle is back, saying in its statement that the competition ‘will return to taking place every Two Years’. The vote was unanimous.
For Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the reversal rewrites the story they were handed.
Their 2027 finals, running from 19 June to 17 July, were billed as the end of the old biennial era. Motsepe said in December that the AFCON two-year cycle would finish with that edition. Now it is simply the next one.
It remains a first. No Africa Cup of Nations has been shared by three hosts before, and Al Jazeera notes it returns the finals to East Africa for the first time since Ethiopia staged them in 1976.
The U-turn did not arrive out of the blue. CAF announced the four-year plan on the eve of the 2025 finals in Morocco, then Motsepe told its strategic conference in Cape Verde, held from 7 to 9 October, that the decision would be revisited.
The reason was money. CAF says the planned African Nations League, meant to take AFCON’s biennial slot, would need several years before it could earn enough to make African football self-sufficient.
Put plainly, the confederation has conceded that its replacement product was not ready to pay its way. The AFCON two-year cycle comes with scheduling headaches, but it also comes with a track record: the tournament has traditionally been staged every two years since 1968.
The calendar problem behind the four-year plan has not vanished. BBC Sport notes that biennial hosting has long clashed with the European club season. Motsepe framed the decision as protecting CAF’s 54 member associations and African players at clubs abroad.
The new calendar runs 2027, 2028, 2031 and 2033, with nothing in 2030 because of the World Cup. Even with the AFCON two-year cycle restored, the gaps are uneven: one year, then three, then two.
Who hosts 2028 is still open. CAF confirmed bids from Ethiopia, Morocco and a joint Botswana and South Africa proposal in February, and no host has been named.
None of that changes the work under way across the three host countries.
Kenya’s flagship is the new 60,000-seat Talanta Sports International Stadium in Nairobi. Nicholus Musonye, who chairs the country’s organising committee, told Al Jazeera that outstanding requirements were being addressed and insisted ‘we are ready to host AFCON’.
In early October he said work on the Kasarani pitch should finish by the end of the month, with handover planned for December. A Kenyan fan in the same report was less convinced, saying training grounds for visiting teams were not ready.
Tanzania’s organisers put their stadiums at more than 80 per cent complete on average, with handover to CAF expected in January. In Uganda, CAF’s infrastructure monitoring officer, Patrick Ogwel, expects the infrastructure to be ready by 31 December, and in September the state minister for sports ordered the army to speed up work on training sites.
Here is what matters beyond the concrete. CAF itself says its replacement tournament needs years before it starts earning. The AFCON two-year cycle may therefore carry more of the confederation’s finances than it planned for.
If so, a shaky 2027 would be costly for CAF as well as the hosts. A tournament with unfinished training grounds is a poor advertisement for a competition the confederation now has to lean on.
Motsepe says he is ‘confident it will be a great success’. He needs the stadiums and training grounds in all three countries finished before that can be judged.
In December, CAF sold the continent a new structure. In October, it bought back the AFCON two-year cycle. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda now have less than eight months to stage the tournament that was meant to be the old format’s farewell.
