Reigning champions Japan are one of nine former winners who will be at the 20th edition of the AFC U17 Asian Cup™, which is scheduled to take place from April 3 to 20, 2025. Of the 16 teams that featured at the previous edition in 2023, 12 will return for another shot at glory.
The top eight finishers will also seal their places at the FIFA U-17 World Cup Qatar 2025 – the first edition of the newly expanded 48-team strong annual tournament.
The 16 contenders for Saudi Arabia 2025 have been seeded into four pots, in line with the updated seeding principles to be applied in all AFC competitions without access to the corresponding FIFA world ranking for draw events that are organised from 2025 onwards.
This will be based on a points system derived from their final rankings across the previous three editions, with the points obtained by a Member Association from each edition to be weighted progressively as follows:
– Latest edition: 100% of ranking points
– 2nd last edition: 50% of ranking points
– 3rd last edition: 25% of ranking points
As a result, the four pots, derived from the ranking from the previous three editions (2016, 2018, 2023) are as follow, with the hosts seeded first:
Pot 1: Saudi Arabia, Japan, Korea Republic, Islamic Republic of Iran
Pot 2: Australia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
Pot 3: Thailand, Vietnam, Oman, Afghanistan
Pot 4: China PR, Indonesia, DPR Korea, United Arab Emirates
