Bafana Bafana's 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying opponents feature Nigeria, Zimbabwe

Coach Hugo Broos' charges were drawn in Group C and they were pitted against old foes Nigeria, neighbours Zimbabwe and Lesotho, as well as Benin and Rwanda.

The road to 2026 is set to kick-off in November, with fixture details set to be confirmed at a later date, with the remaining round of 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers to be completed during the September window.

The showpiece – set to be hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico – will for the first time feature 48 participating teams, after FIFA expanded the tournament from 32.

Following this expansion, Africa will now have nine participants – up from five representatives, with the potential of a 10th through an inter-confederation play-off.

For this reason, the 54 CAF nations will battle it out in nine groups of six teams rather than the tradition four-team groups, with the winners of each group progressing directly to the World Cup.

Thereafter, the four best runners-up from the nine groups will then enter in a play-off to determine the one team that progresses to the inter-confederation tournament, which will feature a team from five confederations, namely CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, AFC, and OFC.

The play-off tournement will exclude a representative of UEFA, from which 16 teams will qualify automatically, and instead feature an additional team from the host confederation CONCACAF.

Full 2026 FIFA World Cup CAF Qualifying Groups:

Group A: Egypt, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Djibouti

Group B: Senegal, Congo DR, Mauritania, Togo, Sudan, South Sudan

Group C: Nigeria, South Africa, Benin, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Lesotho

Group D: Cameroon, Cape Verde, Angola, Libya, Eswatini, Mauritius

Group E: Morocco, Zambia, Congo (Brazzaville), Tanzania, Niger, Eritrea

Group F: Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Kenya, The Gambia, Burundi, Seychelles

Group G: Algeria, Guinea, Uganda, Mozambique, Botswana, Somalia

Group H: Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, Namibia, Malawi, Liberia, São Tomé and Príncipe

Group I: Mali, Ghana, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Comoros, Chad