The 2025 COSAFA Cup, officially known as the 2025

Hollywoodbets Hollywoodbets is a South African sports betting company offering a wide range of betting options, including horse racing, football/soccer, cricket, rugby, tennis, motorsport and more. Hollywoodbets offers over 2400 Lucky Numbers draws a week to ...

COSAFA Cup (for sponsorship purposes), was the 24th edition of the

COSAFA Cup The COSAFA Cup (known fully as COSAFA Senior Challenge Cup) is an annual tournament for teams from Southern Africa organized by Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA), inaugurated after the ban against the Republic of Sout ...

, the annual international

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 organised by

COSAFA Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (; ), officially abbreviated as COSAFA, is an association of the football playing nations in Southern Africa. It is affiliated to CAF. COSAFA organise several tournaments in the Southern African ...

for the senior men's national teams of their member associations.

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

hosted the tournament for the eighth consecutive year, from 4 to 15 June 2025. The tournament involved 14 teams.

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

were the defending champions, having secured their fourth title in the previous edition.

Participation

All 14

member nations are eligible to participate in the competition, with members from other regional confederations also eligible to join by invitation, either to complete the number of participating teams or to replace any that withdrew.

Participating teams

In May 2025, it was announced that 13 of the 14

member nations would take part in the tournament, with

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

from

UNAF The Union of North African Football (UNAF; ; ) is an association football organising body. It was launched in 2005 by the North African members of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. The post ...

completing the lineup in place of

Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (; Seychellois Creole: ), is an island country and archipelagic state consisting of 155 islands (as per the Constitution) in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, Victoria, ...

, who did not return for this edition. On 29 May, Morocco withdrew from the competition and were replaced by

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

from

CECAFA The Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (, , , ; officially abbreviated as CECAFA) is an association of the football playing nations in mostly East Africa and parts of Central Africa. An affiliate of the Confederation of Afr ...

. Of the 14 participating nations,

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

and

Mauritius Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Ag ...

returned to the competition after missing the previous two and one editions, respectively. ;Key :A: First team :A': Local team :U23 Under-23 team (Olympic team)

Squads

Each team may name a preliminary squad of up to 30 players, which must be reduced to a final list of 23 for the tournament.

Venues

The following two stadiums in the province of Free State were selected to host matches during the tournament, with one of them having previously served as a venue for the

2010 FIFA World Cup The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for List of men's national association football teams, men's national Association football, football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010. ...

Final draw

The final tournament draw took place on 21 May 2025, 11:00 SAST (

UTC+2 UTC+02:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +02:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2020-11-08T23:41:45+02:00. As standard time (year-round) Principal cities: Pretoria, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Por ...

). Four teams; the hosts, the defending champions, and the two highest-ranked sides according to the April 2025 FIFA Rankings, were automatically seeded in position 1 of Groups A to D. The remaining ten teams were divided into two pots based on their FIFA Rankings, with four teams placed in Pot 1 and six in Pot 2.

Seeding

Draw

Match officials

;Referees * Thabang Ketshabile * Arnaud Zafimahatoha * Godfrey Nkhakananga * Patrice Milazar * Celso Alvação * Mweshitsama Naftal * Hillary Hambaba * Brighton Chimene ;Assistant Referees * Gaselame Molefe * Hangula Angula * Moustoifa Elmahfoudhe * Zamani Simelane * Romuald Ibenantenaina * Fabien Cauvelet * Lameck Phiri * Zacarias Balói * Elphas Sitole * Trywell Nyirenda ;Video assistant referees * Letticia Viana * Mary Njoroge * Maria Rivet * Shaji Padayachy * Akhona Makalima * Trywell Nyirenda * Claris Simango

Group stage

Tiebreakers

Teams were ranked according to

points A point is a small dot or the sharp tip of something. Point or points may refer to: Mathematics * Point (geometry), an entity that has a location in space or on a plane, but has no extent; more generally, an element of some abstract topologica ...

(3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss). If two teams were tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings: # Points in head-to-head matches match between the two tied teams; #

Goal difference Goal difference, goal differential or points difference is a form of tiebreaker used to rank sport teams which finish on equal points in a league competition. Either "goal difference" or "points difference" is used, depending on whether matches ar ...

in all group matches; # Goals scored in all group matches; # Drawing of lots. If more than two teams were tied, the following criteria were applied instead: # Points in matches between the tied teams; # Goal difference in matches between the tied teams; # Goals scored in matches between the tied teams; # If after applying all criteria above, two teams were still tied, the above criteria were again applied to matches played between the two teams in question. If this did not resolve the tie, the next three criteria were applied; # Goal difference in all group matches; # Goals scored in all group matches; # Drawing of lots.

Group A

---- ----

Group B

---- ----

Group C

---- ----

Group D

---- ----

Knockout stage

Bracket

Semi-finals

----

Third-place

Final

Statistics

Goalscorers

Discipline

A player was automatically suspended for the next match for the following offences: * Receiving a red card (red card suspensions could be extended for serious offences) * Receiving two yellow cards in two different matches; yellow cards expired after the completion of the group stage unless the second yellow was received in the final group match (yellow card suspensions were not carried forward to any other future international matches)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:COSAFA Cup, 2025

2025 So far, the year has seen the continuation of major armed conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Sudanese civil war (2023–present), Sudanese civil war, and the Gaza war. Internal crises in Bangladesh post-resignation v ...

2025 in African football International association football competitions hosted by South Africa June 2025 sports events in South Africa 2024–25 in South African soccer