Mozambique and Uganda have qualified for the FIFA U-17 World Cup Qatar 2026™, completing the 48-team line-up for the global finals.
The nations punched their tickets by winning their respective play-off matches at the ongoing CAF U-17 Africa Cup of Nations. Incredibly, both victories came from penalty shootouts.
In Saturday’s early game, Mozambique battled back from conceding an early goal to defeat Ethiopia 5-4 on penalties following a 1-1 draw during regulation. During the shootout, Eniyew Selesh missed for Ethiopia before Charif Carlos scored the winning spot-kick to send Mozambique to their inaugural U-17 World Cup.
In the later fixture, Uganda appeared to be heading towards defeat to Ghana before Arafat Ibanda scored an injury-time penalty to level the scores at 2-2 to take the game to another shootout. The two sides could not be separated but eventually the breakthrough came when Jacob Kpoeti missed for Ghana and Travor Mubiru hit the winning spot-kick to seal an 8-7 victory.
Uganda have qualified for a second successive finals after reaching the Round of 16 at Qatar 2025. Meanwhile, Ghana suffered further heartache after missing out on an automatic qualifying spot to Algeria following the drawing of lots.
Host nation: Qatar
AFC: Australia, China PR, Korea Republic, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam
CAF: Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda
Concacaf: Costa Rica, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, USA
CONMEBOL: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Venezuela
OFC: Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand
UEFA: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Serbia, Spain
Everything you need to know about Qatar 2026
Picture credit: CAF
