The Ladies’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon) finals will develop from 12 to 16 groups ranging from the 2026 version, the Confederation of African Soccer (Caf) has introduced.
Subsequent 12 months’s match in Morocco was set to have 12 competing sides, and qualifying for the finals has already reached the second and final round.
The growth will seemingly require a 3rd spherical of preliminaries to be performed, with 11 remaining nations competing for 4 spots.
Caf is anticipated to announce additional particulars after discussions at its government committee assembly being held in Kinshasa.
Wafcon was an eight-team match from its first version in 1998 till the 2018 finals in Ghana.
The 2020 Wafcon was scrapped due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however the competitors returned with 12 sides in 2022.
Caf has invested in an effort to enhance ladies’s soccer on the continent, with this 12 months’s match in Morocco seeing a forty five% improve within the total prize pot to $3.45m (£2.6m).
Champions Nigeria had been handed $1m (£750,000) after winning a record-extending 10th Wafcon title.
“I’m happy with the progress we have made in ladies’s African soccer,” Caf president Patrice Motsepe mentioned.
“A part of my place to begin is ensuring [men and women] are paid nicely and so they could make a profession out of soccer.
“I can guarantee you ladies’s soccer will proceed to enhance as a result of that’s an space we’re focussing on lots.”
