The Confederation of African Football (CAF) this week invited its member associations that represent 54 African countries to submit bids to host the CAF Africa Cup of Nations in 2028, 2032, and 2036.
The CAF AFCON competition is the biggest sporting event in Africa and is also among the biggest sporting events in the world, with more than 3.2 billion TV audiences and six billion digital views globally.
The next tournament, called the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations PAMOJA 2027, will take place in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda from 19 June to 17 July 2027.
This marks the first time the tournament will be staged in the East African region in over 50 years and will be the first edition jointly hosted by three nations. It will also be the last tournament to be held in an odd year, as CAF transitions the event to a four-year cycle beginning in 2028.
CAF has developed an AFCON 2028, 2032, and 2036 bidding framework with the support of its independent expert adviser, PwC, and its technical, financial and external legal advisers. The framework establishes a transparent, credible and ethical process for the evaluation and selection of the host country or host countries for each AFCON edition and is in accordance with global best practices.
CAF will also host a competition involving senior men’s national teams every year except during the year of the FIFA World Cup.
Commercially, CAF has released that the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations Morocco 2025 is now undoubtedly the most successful commercial story in the history of African football, as the commercial success of the competition has led to over a 90 percent increase in the CAF revenues, driven by a significant increase in the commercial partners of CAF, an increase in media rights distribution, and also CAF venturing into new markets, most notably the Far East, China, and Japan, while also consolidating traditional markets.
In terms of the growth in commercial sponsors, CAF wrote on its official website that the growth has been matched by a steady expansion of the sponsor portfolio. The number of commercial partners increased from nine during the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations Cameroon 2021 to 17 during the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations Cote d’Ivoire 2023.
For the 2025 edition in Morocco, CAF continued to attract more partners and now has 23. According to CAF, this expansion reflects both the attraction of new global brands and the retention of existing partners, for whom the TotalEnergies CAF AFCON has been an excellent return on investment.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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