The qualification began with the preliminary round, which ran from 20 to 26 March 2024, and concluded with the group stage, which was played in September, October and November, all in 2024.

A total of 24 teams qualified to play in the final tournament, including automatically-qualified hosts Morocco.

[1] The preliminary round draw was held on 20 February 2024, 14:00 CAT (UTC+2) at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.

The 48 national teams involved were divided into twelve groups of four each, which consisted of the 44 teams that entered directly, in addition to the four winners of the preliminary round, and were seeded into four pots of twelve each based on the June 2024 FIFA World Rankings (shown in parentheses).

Morocco (12; hosts) Senegal (18) Egypt (36) Ivory Coast (37) Nigeria (38) Tunisia (41) Algeria (44) Cameroon (49) Mali (50) South Africa (59) DR Congo (61) Ghana (64) Cape Verde (65) Burkina Faso (67) Guinea (77) Gabon (83) Equatorial Guinea (89) Zambia (90) Benin (91) Angola (92) Uganda (94) Namibia (97) Mozambique (103) Madagascar (104) Kenya (108) Mauritania (112) Congo (113) Tanzania (114) Guinea-Bissau (115) Libya (118) Comoros (119) Togo (120) Sudan (121) Sierra Leone (122) Malawi (125) Central African Republic (127) Niger (128) Zimbabwe (129) Rwanda (131) Gambia (132) Burundi (140) Liberia (142) Ethiopia (143) Botswana (145) Lesotho (149) Eswatini (154) South Sudan (167) Chad (178) The teams were ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss).