Raring to go: Morocco set for ‘unrivalled’ AfCON tournament

With days to go before the Africa Cup of Nations kicks off, Morocco is signalling to the rest of the world that it has pulled out all the stops to making one of football’s greatest theatres a memorable event.

This Maghrebi kingdom of 38.8 million people has caught the eye in more ways than one including far reaching infrastructural makeover linked to the Africa Cup of Nations, the second time it will host it after the 1988 edition. The tournament should have gone to the kingdom in 2015 but an ebola epidemic that year prompted one of the Maghreb’s most prosperous nations to stand down with Equatorial Guinea taking over as host.

Ten years after missing out on hosting one of the standout tournaments in the global sporting calender, Morocco has announced that it was ready to play host to some of the biggest names in African football and set the stage for the most memorable episodes in the competition’s illustrious history.

The euphoric feeling among the local organisers and most Moroccan fans of the sport is that the quality of the games is going to be one for the ages, the organisation just as epic for which the gods of football will forever be grateful to Morocco.

From humble origins to global glamour

With humble beginnings, the AfCON has grown from a non-descript unglamorous continental football tournament featuring a few national teams requiring no qualification other than being members of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) which was founded in 1956. A year later the CAF founding quartet of Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and apartheid-run South Africa were set to play the inaugural tournament in Khartoum. South Africa was disqualified after refusing to back down over choosing only white players for its squad which was informed by its apartheid policy. Ethiopia took its place.

68 years later, featuring 24 national teams in the continent, watched by 1.4 billion viewers around the world, and churning out billions of dollars in broadcast revenues, the tournament has grown exponentially. As Morocco host it from December 21st 2025 to January 18th 2026, the stakes could never be higher, the interest in it bigger, and the display on the pitch more unpredictable and more and more competing nations come of age in the game.

Airports tap into pre game mood

The airports are the surest sites offering more than a glimpse of how seriously Morocco was taking its role of hosting teams, their delegations and thousands of visitors who have been flying into the kingdom for purely football terms since last month. Emblazoned with colourful and cheerful AfCON stickers, welcoming the world to Moroccan hospitality, airports have been the go-to place to tap the raw excitement and giddy expectations that the kingdom would aquit itself well through the course of the tournament.

Last week, the National Airports Authority (ONDA) unveiled its institutional promotional video, “Welcome Football, Welcome Fans”, an affirmation to the global football community that all airports across the kingdom are fully mobilised to welcome fans, delegations, and teams in the best possible conditions under the sun.

“The kingdom’s airports are on the frontline and intend to fully play their role as genuine gateways to celebrate the Total Energies Africa Cup of Nations 2025 in collaboration with the Local Organising Committee and CAF,” an ONDA statement said.

All airports linked to the competition have been beehives of activity connected to managing the anticipated passenger flows.

The airports are so well drilled that already there are so-called orientation zones, multilingual signage facilities, assistance teams, and continuous operational monitoring to render optimal support immediately upon arrival on Moroccan soil.

Stadiums raring to go

History is being made because for the first time, AfCON matches will be played in nine stadiums across six cities in Morocco.