The 2023 AFC Asian Cup qualification was the qualification process organized by the
Asian Football Confederation
The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in most countries and territories in Asia. The AFC was formed in 1954. It has 47 members. The Asian Ladies Football Confederation ( ...
(AFC) to determine the participating teams for the
2023 AFC Asian Cup
The 2023 AFC Asian Cup was the 18th edition of the AFC Asian Cup, the quadrennial international Association football, football tournament organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It involved 24 national teams after its expansion in 20 ...
, the 18th edition of the international men's
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
championship of Asia.
The qualification process involved four rounds, where the first two rounds doubled as the
2022 FIFA World Cup qualification for Asian teams. Only the first round acted as qualifiers for the cancelled
2020 AFC Solidarity Cup as the six teams which were eliminated from the
first round
First most commonly refers to:
* First, the ordinal form of the number 1
First or 1st may also refer to:
Acronyms
* Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array
* Far Infrared a ...
of the 2022 World Cup and 2023 Asian Cup joint qualifiers. The two teams that were eliminated from the play-off round of the Asian Cup qualifiers were among the four teams that would have qualified for the Solidarity Cup.
Format
The qualification structure was as follows:
*First round: 12 teams (ranked 35–46) played home-and-away over
two legs. The six winners advanced to the second round.
*Second round: 40 teams (ranked 1–34 and six first round winners) were divided into eight groups of five teams to play home-and-away
round-robin matches.
**The eight group winners and the five best group runners-up qualified for the AFC Asian Cup (and advance to the third round of
2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers).
**The next 22 highest ranked teams (the remaining three group runners-up, the eight third-placed teams, the eight fourth-placed teams and the three best groups fifth-placed teams) advanced directly to the third round of Asian Cup qualification.
**The remaining 4 teams entered the play-off round to contest the remaining two spots in the third round of Asian Cup qualification.
*Play-off round: There was one round of home-and-away two-legged play-off matches that determined the final two qualifiers for the third round.
*Third round: The 24 teams were divided into six groups of four to play single round-robin matches in six centralised venues, and they competed for the remaining slots of the Asian Cup.
Entrants
The 46
FIFA
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...
-affiliated nations from the AFC entered qualification, with the April 2019
FIFA Men's World Rankings
The FIFA Men's World Ranking is a ranking system for men's national teams in association football, first introduced in December 1992. The men's teams of the member nations of FIFA, football's world governing body, are ranked based on their gam ...
used to determine which nations would compete in the first round and which nations would receive a bye through to the second round. For seeding in the second round and third round draws, the most recent FIFA Rankings prior to those draws have been expected to be used.
Due to the joint format of the World Cup and Asian Cup qualifiers, Qatar (as the host nation of the
2022 FIFA World Cup
The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the 22nd FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022, after the country was awarded the hosting ri ...
) also entered the second round of Asian Cup qualifiers.
The following restrictions were applied:
*
Northern Mariana Islands
The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), is an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territory and Commonwealth (U.S. insular area), commonwealth of the United States consistin ...
, which was not a FIFA member, could not enter.
*
Timor-Leste
Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the coastal exclave of Oecusse in the island's northwest, and ...
was barred from participating in the Asian Cup qualification after being found to have fielded a total of twelve ineligible players in
2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification matches, among other competitions. However, as FIFA did not ban Timor-Leste from the World Cup qualifiers, the country was allowed to enter the competition, but was ineligible to qualify for the Asian Cup.
Schedule
The schedule of the competition was as follows in the tables below.
On 9 March 2020, FIFA and AFC announced that the second round matches on matchdays 7–10 due to take place in March and June 2020 were postponed to later dates due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, with the new dates to be confirmed. However, subject to approval by FIFA and AFC, and agreement of both member associations, the matches could be played as scheduled provided that the safety of all individuals involved met the required standards. On 5 June, AFC confirmed that matchdays 7 and 8 were scheduled to take place on 8 and 13 October respectively, while matchdays 9 and 10 were also scheduled to kick off on 12 and 17 November.
On 12 August, AFC announced that the upcoming qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup and 2023 Asian Cup, originally scheduled to take place during the international match windows in October and November 2020, were rescheduled to 2021.
On 11 November 2020, the AFC Competitions Committee agreed at its meeting that all remaining second round matches were to be completed by 15 June 2021, with matchdays 7 and 8 in March, and matchdays 9 and 10 in June. However, on the same day, FIFA, along with the Bangladeshi and Qatari member associations, gave approval to the only second round match originally scheduled for 2020, Qatar v Bangladesh, which was played on 4 December.
On 19 February 2021, FIFA and AFC postponed the majority of the upcoming matches to June.
On 20 October, the AFC reported that the third round would begin in June 2022, with the final round draw to be held earlier in February.
First round
The draw for the first round took place on 17 April 2019 at 11:00
MST (
UTC+8
UTC+08:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +08:00.
It is the most populous time zone in the world, as well as a possible candidate for ASEAN Common Time, mainly due to China's large population, with an estimated population ...
), at the AFC House in
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur (KL), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, is the capital city and a Federal Territories of Malaysia, federal territory of Malaysia. It is the largest city in the country, covering an area of with a census population ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
.
The six teams eliminated from this round progressed to the cancelled
2020 AFC Solidarity Cup.
Second round
The draw for the second round was held on 17 July 2019 at 17:00
MST (
UTC+8
UTC+08:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +08:00.
It is the most populous time zone in the world, as well as a possible candidate for ASEAN Common Time, mainly due to China's large population, with an estimated population ...
), at AFC House in
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur (KL), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, is the capital city and a Federal Territories of Malaysia, federal territory of Malaysia. It is the largest city in the country, covering an area of with a census population ...
,
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
.
Groups
Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
Group E
Group F
Group G
Group H
North Korea withdrew from the qualifying round due to safety concerns related to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, therefore the results of their matches were excluded from the group standings.
Ranking of runner-up teams
Group H contained only four teams compared to five teams in all other groups after North Korea withdrew from the competition. Therefore, the results against the fifth-placed team were not counted when determining the ranking of the runner-up teams.
Ranking of fifth-placed teams
Play-off round
Four teams competed in a single round for two slots to the third round. It was planned to have a total of eight slots for the third round be available from this round (four from round 1, four from round 2) and the four teams that were to be eliminated from this stage would have progressed to the later cancelled
2020 AFC Solidarity Cup.
Third round
A total of 24 teams competed in the third round of AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. Since the then-2023 hosts
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
advanced to the
2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying third round, the automatic slot for the hosts was no longer necessary, and a total of 11 slots for the Asian Cup were available from this round.
Groups
Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
Group E
Group F
Ranking of runner-up teams
Qualified teams

The following 24 teams qualified for the
final tournament in
Qatar
Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...
.
;Notes
Top goalscorers
Below is full goalscorers lists for all rounds:
*
First round
First most commonly refers to:
* First, the ordinal form of the number 1
First or 1st may also refer to:
Acronyms
* Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array
* Far Infrared a ...
*
Second round
The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...
*
Play-off round
*
Third round
Third or 3rd may refer to:
Numbers
* 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3
* , a fraction of one third
* 1⁄60 of a ''second'', i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system
Places
* 3rd Street (di ...
See also
*
2022 FIFA World Cup qualification (AFC)
The Asian section of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification acted as qualifiers for the 2022 FIFA World Cup held in Qatar for national teams who are members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Apart from Qatar national football team, Qata ...
Notes
References
External links
*, the-AFC.com
Preliminary Joint Qualification 2022 stats.the-AFC.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Afc Asian Cup qualification 2023
Qualification
Qualification may refer to:
Processes
* Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS), a competitive contract procurement process established by the United States Congress
* Process qualification, ensures that manufacturing and production processes can ...
2023
Catastrophic natural disasters in 2023 included the Lists of 21st-century earthquakes, 5th-deadliest earthquake of the 21st century 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes, striking Turkey and Syria, leaving up to 62,000 people dead; Cyclone Freddy ...
2019 in Asian football
2020 in Asian football
2021 in Asian football
2022 in Asian football
AFC Asian Cup
The AFC Asian Cup is the primary association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), determining the continental champion of Asia. It is the second-oldest c ...