The 2026 AFC U-17 Women's Asian Cup will be the 10th edition of the AFC U-17 Women's Asian Cup (including previous editions of the AFC U-17 Women's Championship and AFC U-16 Women's Championship), the annual international youth football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the women's under-17 national teams of Asia. It will be the first of three consecutive AFC U-17 Women's Asian Cup held in China (also in Suzhou), preceding the 2027 and 2028.
It will be held in China between 1–17 May 2026.[1][2] For the first time, total of twelve teams will compete in the tournament[3] and there will be no third place playoff.[4]
The host country and the top three teams of the previous tournament in 2024 qualified automatically, while the other eight teams were decided by qualification.[3] There was one round of qualification matches, which was held between 13–17 October 2025.[1][2]
The draw took place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 12 February 2026 at 15:00 MST (UTC+8).[7][8][9] The twelve teams were drawn into three groups of four teams. The teams were seeded according to a points system derived from their final rankings across the previous three editions, with the hosts China automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.
Players born between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2011 were eligible to compete in the tournament. Each team must register a squad of minimum 18 players and maximum 23 players, minimum three of whom must be goalkeepers (Regulations Articles 22.1 and 26.3).
Group stage
The top two teams of each group and the two best third-placed teams qualified for the quarter-finals.
Tiebreakers
Teams were ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and should they tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings (Regulations Article 7.3):[4]
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Should more than two teams were tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams were still tied, all head-to-head criteria above were reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams are tied and they meet in the last round of the group;
Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
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