African football is heading to North America in force. Ivory Coast, Cape Verde, Egypt, Morocco, and Ghana have all qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a tournament that arrives with a significantly bigger stage than anything the sport has seen before.
The 2026 edition is the first to use a 48-team format, up from the 32-team tournaments that defined the competition for decades. For African football, that expansion meant nine CAF spots were on the table, and these five nations are among those who claimed them.
Who’s in and why it matters
Morocco needs no introduction after their run to the semifinals at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a performance that rewrote expectations for what African teams could accomplish on the global stage.
Then there’s Cape Verde, and this is where the story gets genuinely interesting. A nation of roughly 500,000 people, Cape Verde has quietly built one of the most over-performing football programs relative to population size anywhere in the world.
