The AFC Challenge Cup was an international football competition for Asian Football Confederation (AFC) member countries that were categorised as "emerging countries" in the "Vision Asia" programme.

An amendment to men's national team competitions in July 2006, meant that starting with the 2008 and 2010 editions of the AFC Challenge Cup, the winners automatically qualify for the AFC Asian Cup.

[5][6] In April 2016, due to several associations requesting a new competition to replace the Challenge Cup as they were having problems arranging friendly matches, the AFC created the AFC Solidarity Cup.

Although the tournament was meant for the countries of emerging associations class, some countries from the developing associations class have participated in the qualification and the finals of the tournament such as India, Maldives, Myanmar, North Korea, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

As a result, only one team from the emerging class ever won the tournament, Palestine in 2014.