The Subway Australian U23s will learn their group stage opponents for the AFC U23 Asian Cup™ Saudi Arabia 2026 Qualifiers, with the draw set to take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Thursday at 5pm AEST.
The ceremony, held at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, will sort the cast into 11 groups to do battle for the Qualifiers, which will occur between September 1 and 9, 2025.
Fifteen spots are up for grabs at the seventh iteration of the tournament, which will be hosted by Saudi Arabia for the inaugural time and will take place in January 2026.
The Aussies, led by Tony Vidmar, have been placed in Pot 1 and are ranked 7th.
More information on the draw can be found here.
How To Watch
The draw will be live streamed on the AFC's Official YouTube channel on Thursday, May 29, 2025 at 5pm AEST here!
Each Qualifiers group will be contested in a centralised league format and with teams to be seeded into five pots based on a points system derived from their final rankings across the previous three editions of the Finals. The points from each edition will be weighted progressively as follows:
- Latest edition (2024): 100% of ranking points
- 2nd last edition (2022): 50% of ranking points
- 3rd last edition (2020): 25% of ranking points
At the start of the draw, the teams that will serve as centralised hosts will be separately allocated to a Hosts Pot to ensure that they are drawn into different groups.
The pot allocations, with rankings indicated in brackets, are as follow:
Pot 1: Uzbekistan (1), Japan (2), Iraq (3), Korea Republic (5), Australia (7)
Pot 2: Kuwait (14), Islamic Republic of Iran (15), Turkmenistan (16), Malaysia (17), Bahrain (19), Palestine (20), Syria (21), Yemen (22)
Pot 3: Oman (25), Singapore (26), India (28), Lebanon (29), Laos (30), Timor-Leste (31), Chinese Taipei (32), Philippines (33), Hong Kong, China (34)
Pot 4: Afghanistan (35), Bangladesh (36), Mongolia (37), Guam (39), Pakistan (41), Macau (42), Nepal (43), Brunei Darussalam (44), Sri Lanka (45), Bhutan (46), Northern Mariana Islands (47)
Hosts Pot: Vietnam (6; Seed: 1), Qatar (8;1), Thailand (9;1), Jordan (10;1), Tajikistan (11;1), United Arab Emirates (12;1), Indonesia (13;2), China PR (18;2), Cambodia (23;2), Myanmar (24;3), Kyrgyz Republic (27;3)