South Africa will open their qualifying bid for the next Africa Cup of Nations semifinals with a home match against Uganda in Soweto on Friday, September 6, the Confederation of African Football have confirmed.
Their opening Group K match will be played at the Orlando Stadium, with a 6pm kick off.
Bafana Bafana will then travel to Juba to meet South Sudan on Tuesday, September 10 in a clash that kicks off at 3pm.
It will be their first match against Africa’s newest nation, whose stadium has recently been renovated. They lost 3-0 to Sudan there in June in World Cup qualification when the stadium was re-opened.
Congo are the other team in Group K of the 2025 qualifiers. Bafana will play them in October home and away, but those dates and venues are yet to be finalised.
The top two in each group will qualify for the 24-team final, except the group in which the hosts are placed, where only one other country besides Morocco goes through.
The qualifiers are being sandwiched into rapid-fire three-month period this September, October and November.
It will then be more than 12 months before the finals are hosted in Morocco, having been moved from mid-2025 to the end of the year because it clashed with Fifa’s new look Club World Cup.
The 2025 Cup of Nations finals were put back six months by the Confederation of African Football and will now be played from December 21, 2025 to January 18, 2026.