Library Weekly

The ASCL's Library Weekly is our library’s weekly spotlight on African people and events. Inspired by the SciHiBlog, this service is based on information retrieved from Wikipedia and Wikidata and is completed with selected titles from the ASCL Library Catalogue.

N.B. The weeklies are not updated and reflect the state of information at a given point in time.

Library Weekly archive

2025 Africa Cup of Nations

(Ben Sutherland, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons) From 21 December 2025 to 18 January 2026, the 35th edition of the biennial Africa Cup of Nations tournament, known in short as the 2025 AFCON or CAN 2025, is hosted by Morocco. Originally Guinea was set as hosts for this edition of the tournament, but had its hosting rights stripped after affirming its inadequacy of hosting preparations. After a second bidding process, Morocco was named as the new hosts on 27 September 2023, it is the second edition hosted by Morocco after 1988. Due to FIFA expanding its Club World Cup competition to 32 teams and having it scheduled for June and July 2025, this edition of the tournament is played played over the Christmas and New Year period for the first time.

The tournament is sanctioned by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and was first held in 1957. Since 1968, it has been held every two years. In the first tournament in 1957, there were only three participating nations: Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia. South Africa was originally scheduled to join, but was disqualified due to the apartheid policies of the government then in power. Since then, the tournament has expanded greatly, making it necessary to hold a qualifying tournament. The number of participants in the final tournament reached 16 in 1998. The 2019 edition of the tournament was moved from January to June and all future tournaments were expanded from 16 to 24 teams.

(Source: Wikipedia accessed on 13 January 2026)