Sources said the draw for the 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers will be held on July 27 this year, reports Madsen Reporter. The draw will also double as the draw for the 2026 World Cup Asian qualifiers.
Based on the latest FIFA rankings from July 20, each participating team is slotted. The national soccer team is currently ranked 11th in Asia. Due to the huge gap between Uzbekistan and 9th-ranked Omanistan, it is essentially impossible for them to overtake Uzbekistan and Omanistan even if they win two warm-up matches in June. As a result, the national soccer team will most likely participate in the group draw for the second team on July 27th.
According to the AFC Competition Plan, the "Asian Cup Qualifiers" and "World Cup Qualifiers" are combined into one, i.e. the first and second stages of the 2026 World Cup Qualifiers in Asia will also be the first and second stages of the 2027 Asian Cup Qualifiers.
In the first stage, according to the FIFA rankings, the top 25 teams from the 47 member associations under the AFC will enter the second stage directly on a rotational basis; the 22 teams at the bottom of the rankings will first play a round of knockout matches, with the 26th- to 36th-ranked teams seeded to play, and the 37th- to 47th-ranked teams to play separately. The tournament will be played on a home-and-away basis, with the winning 11 teams advancing to the second stage of the tournament. The tournament is scheduled for Oct. 12 and Oct. 17 this year.
In the second phase of the tournament, popularly known as the "36-team tournament", the 11 teams that won the first phase of the tournament and the 25 teams that were directly promoted to the second phase of the tournament make up the 36 teams. These teams will be divided into nine groups of four teams each, playing in a double round-robin system of home and away matches. The two teams with the highest points from each group will advance to the third stage with a total of 18 teams, which will also participate in the 2027 Asian Cup Finals. The tournament will last from November this year to June next year.
