{"id":87426,"date":"2025-10-06T18:15:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/uncategorized\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals"},"modified":"2025-10-06T18:51:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T18:51:33","slug":"wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals","title":{"rendered":"Wafcon Expands to 16 Teams for 2026 Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. <\/strong><\/span><b>The Women\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) finals will expand from 12 to 16 teams starting from the 2026 edition, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) has announced.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Next year\u2019s tournament in Morocco was set to have 12 competing sides, and qualifying for the finals has already reached the second and final round.<\/p>\n<p>The expansion will likely require a third round of preliminaries to be played, with 11 remaining nations competing for four spots.<\/p>\n<p>Caf is expected to announce further details after discussions at its executive committee meeting being held in Kinshasa.<\/p>\n<p>Wafcon was an eight-team tournament from its first edition in 1998 until the 2018 finals in Ghana.<\/p>\n<p>The 2020 Wafcon was scrapped because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the competition returned with 12 sides in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Caf has invested in order to improve women\u2019s football on the continent, with this year\u2019s tournament in Morocco seeing a 45% increase in the overall prize pot to US$3.45m (\u00a32.6m).<\/p>\n<p>Champions Nigeria were handed US$1m (\u00a3750,000) after winning a record-extending 10th Wafcon title.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am pleased with the progress we\u2019ve made in women\u2019s African football,\u201d Caf president Patrice Motsepe said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPart of my starting point is making sure [men and women] are paid well and they can make a career out of football.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can assure you women\u2019s football will continue to improve because that is an area we are focussing on a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Gambia<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. The Women\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) finals will expand from 12 to 16 teams starting from the 2026 edition, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) has announced. Next year\u2019s tournament in Morocco was set to have 12 competing sides, and qualifying for the finals has already reached the second and final [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":87425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[260],"class_list":["post-87426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-gambia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Wafcon Expands to 16 Teams for 2026 Finals - Gambia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Women\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) finals will expand from 12 to 16 teams starting from the 2026 edition, the ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wafcon Expands to 16 Teams for 2026 Finals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Women\u2019s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) finals will expand from 12 to 16 teams starting from the 2026 edition, the ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gambia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-10-06T18:15:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-10-06T18:51:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/gambia\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/sm_1759764072.511373.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"403\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Wafcon Expands to 16 Teams for 2026 Finals\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-10-06T18:15:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-10-06T18:51:33+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals\"},\"wordCount\":247,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/gambia\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/sm_1759764072.511373.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Gambia\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"sport\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/wafcon-expands-to-16-teams-for-2026-finals\",\"name\":\"Wafcon Expands to 16 Teams for 2026 Finals - 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