The winners will automatically qualify for the next edition of the competition, and will also earn the right to play against the winners of the 2024–25 CAF Champions League in the 2025 CAF Super Cup.[2]
Association team allocation
All 54 CAF member associations may enter the CAF Confederation Cup, with the 12 highest ranked associations according to the CAF 5-year ranking eligible to enter two teams in the competition.[2] As a result, a maximum of 68 teams could enter the tournament – although this level has never been reached.
For this season's edition, CAF used the 2019–2024 CAF 5-year ranking, which calculates points for each entrant association based on their clubs performance over the 5 years in the CAF Champions League and the CAF Confederation Cup. The criteria for the points are as follows:[3][4]
Associations are shown according to their 2019–2023 CAF 5-year ranking – those with a ranking score have their rank and score (in parentheses) indicated.
Associations eligible to enter two teams (Top 12 associations)
The identity of the team was not known in the draw; as the Coupe du Faso was postponed and the Burkinabé representative was yet to be determined by the time of the draw.[5][6]
The Egyptian Premier League was not finished by the CAF deadline for associations to submit teams participating in this season's CAF competitions. As a result, Al Masry, who finished the first half of the season at third place (and were also at third place by the time of the draw) qualified for the CAF Confederation Cup.[7]
The Libyan Premier League was not finished by the CAF deadline for associations to submit teams participating in this season's CAF competitions. CAF approved a request made by the Libyan Football Federation to submit the names of participating teams in the competition following the end of the season by 22 July 2024, and as a result, Libyan teams were listed as Libya 1 and Libya 2 during the draw; as their identity was still unknown by the time of the draw.[8]
Schedule
The schedule of the qualifying tournament is as follows.
The draw for the qualifying rounds was held on 11 July 2024, 12:00 GMT (15:00 local time, UTC+3), at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.[10][11]
In the qualifying rounds, each tie was played on a home-and-away two-legged basis. If the aggregate score was tied after the second leg, the away goals rule was applied, and if still tied, extra time was not played, and a penalty shoot-out was used to determine the winner (Regulations III. 13 & 14).
The teams were seeded by their performances in the CAF competitions for the previous five seasons (CAF 5-year ranking points shown next to every team). Each group contained one team from Pot 1 and one from Pot 2, with two groups including one team from Pot 3 and one from Pot 4, and the remaining two groups featuring two teams from Pot 4. Teams were allocated to positions in their respective groups according to their pot.
The mechanism of the draws for each round will be as follows:
In the draw for the quarter-finals, the four group winners will be seeded, and the four group runners-up will be unseeded. The seeded teams will be drawn against the unseeded teams, with the seeded teams hosting the second leg. Teams from the same group could not be drawn against each other, while teams from the same association could be drawn against each other.
In the draws for semi-finals, there will be no seedings, and teams from the same group or the same association could be drawn against each other. As the draws for the quarter-finals and semi-finals will be held together before the quarter-finals will be played, the identity of the quarter-final winners will not be known at the time of the semi-final draw.
