Tunisia's Seifeddine Jaziri won the Golden Boot as he scored the most goals during the tournament with four.

Algeria's Raïs M'Bolhi won the Golden Glove, awarded to the goalkeeper with the most clean sheets.

Note: Numbers in parentheses indicate positions in the FIFA World Ranking at the time of the draw.

[21] The group stage draw took place on 27 April 2021 at 21:00 AST at the Katara Opera House in Doha.

[7][11] It was conducted by Manolo Zubiria, FIFA's director of competitions, and four former players: Wael Gomaa (Egypt), Nawaf Al-Temyat (Saudi Arabia), Haitham Mustafa (Sudan) and Younis Mahmoud (Iraq).

The hosts Qatar were automatically seeded into pot 1 and assigned to position A1, while the remaining automatically qualified teams were seeded into their respective pots based on the FIFA World Ranking of April 2021 (shown in parentheses below).

[10] Only 15 players playing in non-Arab leagues were selected in the final 23-man squads: four in Sweden; two in England; one each in Denmark, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Thailand and the United States.

With the exception of Andrés Mattonte (Uruguay) and Facundo Tello (Argentina), all referees had previously officiated matches in a continental tournament.

Iranian Alireza Faghani, Japanese Ryuji Sato, Gambian Bakary Gassama, Zambian Janny Sikazwe and New Zealander Matthew Conger also participated in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

Iranian referee Alireza Faghani officiated the opening match between Tunisia and Mauritania.

The 14 lowest-ranked teams in the FIFA World Ranking met on 7 April 2021, in a single knockout match.

The best two teams from each group (8 in total) advance to the knockout stage to compete in a singles-elimination tournament.