Coinciding with the annual staging of the World Cup, the competition took place yearly until 2009; the World Cup then became biennial, and as its supplementary qualification event, the championship followed suit.
Senegal is the most successful nation in this competition and in World Cup qualifications, having won eight titles, including the latest one in 2024, and qualified from with nine out of eleven attempts; Nigeria follow close behind, with six qualifications.
History
In 2006, FIFA made it a requirement for all confederations to begin holding qualification tournaments to determine the best national team(s) in their region and hence those who would proceed to represent their continent in the upcoming World Cup (previously, nations were simply invited to play without having to earn their place).[4] FIFA currently allocate Africa two berths at the World Cup[5] and hence the top two teams (the winners and the runners-up) qualify to the World Cup finals.[6]
Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW) originally organized the competition[7] under the title FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup CAF qualifier[8] (also known informally as the CAF Beach Soccer Championship).[9] Despite historically having minimal input (often only sending delegates),[10] CAF became lead organizers in 2015,[11] establishing a qualification phase to determine the eight nations to compete in the main tournament. On 6 August 2015, CAF renamed the competition as the "Beach Soccer Africa Cup Of Nations".[12][13] CAF later announced that since three of its competitions were already held in odd-numbered years, the tournament would now be held in even-numbered years henceforth to desaturate the calendar, starting with 2016.[14]
Points: W = 3 points / WE = 2 points / WP = 1 points / L = 0 points
Appearances & performance timeline
The following is a performance timeline of the teams who have appeared in this tournament and how many appearances they each have made.
Additionally, eight teams have entered the qualification round at least once since its introduction in 2015 without having yet qualified for the finals, nor having participated in the tournament before 2015 when entry was automatic which are: Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Sudan and Tunisia. A further team, DR Congo, qualified for the 2021 tournament but withdrew before the finals began.
a. ^ In some years, teams knocked-out at round 1 played no further matches (these results are marked as R1). In other years, classification matches were then played to determine all final placements.
Timeline
Entry requirements:
2006–2013: Automatic entry for all teams.
Since 2015: Eight teams qualify through the qualification round.
1 No qualifiers took place; representatives were selected by the confederation. 2 CONCACAF and CONMEBOL held a joint championship for qualification. 3 Qualification was achieved through the Euro Beach Soccer League. (p) This indicates an additional play-off round, supplement to the main qualification event.
