NAIROBI, Kenya, February 13, 2026 – Confederation of Africa Football (Caf) president Patrice Motsepe has confirmed that next year’s Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) will be held in June-July in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Speaking after an executive committee (ExCo) meeting in Dar es Salaam on Friday afternoon, Motsepe said they will soon announce the exact dates of the competition.
“We will be announcing in due course the date of when the competition will start. It’s going to be next year, June-July, so we’ll tell you specifically what date,” the South African announced.
Motsepe’s declaration puts to bed rumours that had circulated before the meeting, intimating that the competition would be postponed to 2028 due to the unpreparedness of the co-hosts.
At the same time, chair of the local organising committee (LOC) in Kenya, Nicholas Musonye, was quoted by news outlet AFP in which he indicated his openness to the postponement of the competition.
Musonye had pointed to the political tensions around Kenya’s presidential elections as a rationale for moving the tournament to 2028.
However, Motsepe feels that the polls will not interfere with the hosting of the competition.
“Elections in Kenya will be held in August (next year) and by then we will be done with the competition,” he said.
He further announced that they will soon announce the venue for the opening match of the month-long tourney, following consultations between the LOCs of the three countries.
“We need full stadiums, and I can tell you, you should be proud of the way the opening match is going to be here. Isn’t that correct? I was saying the opening match is going to be here in Tanzania. They said, ‘President, wait a minute, it could be in Kenya, it could be in Uganda’. We’ll be guided by you guys,” he said.
Motsepe expressed confidence that the tournament will rake in billions in revenue for the three countries as hundreds of thousands of visitors arrive to watch the matches.
“I was saying to Wallace (Tanzania Football Federation president), one of the top businessmen said to me in America, ‘I’m coming with my family to watch football in Tanzania, and then we’ll also be going to visit the Serengeti.’ We’ll be coming, and the same I was saying to President Ruto, hundreds of thousands of people will be coming for the football,” he said.
The president encouraged young people in the three countries to make the most of the tournament to uplift their standards.
“We don’t have much hotels so if you have a room or a house, you can renovate it and hire it out to tourists at a fee. You can charge them in dollars, say 100 USD a day. It is a huge opportunity for the young people of these countries,” he said.
It will be the first time — since 1976 in Ethiopia — that the Eastern African region will be hosting a competition of such magnitude.
