The group was independently founded in April 1968 in a meeting involving Taiwan, British Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore.

[5] Notes The AFC has 47 member associations split into five subregions: Central (four Soviet Central Asian countries plus Afghanistan and Iran), East (eight East Asian nations and two Micronesian territories: Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), South (five countries on the Indian Subcontinent plus Maldives and Sri Lanka), South East (ten ASEAN countries plus Australia and East Timor), and West (twelve Arab countries).

Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), the Republic of China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam were the founding members.

AFC organises the AFC Futsal Asian Cup, AFC Women's Futsal Asian Cup, AFC Beach Soccer Asian Cup, various age-level international association football, youth futsal tournaments and the Asian qualifying tournament for the FIFA World Cup and for football at the Summer Olympics.

The competition is an amalgamation of the Asian Club Championship, the Asian Cup Winners' Cup and the Asian Super Cup and gathers the top teams from the highest-ranked nations in Asia (the number of teams depend on that country's ranking and can be upgraded or downgraded).