Region Asia (AFC) Current champions Japan (1st title) | Number of teams 16 | |
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Founded 2011; 6 years ago (2011) Most successful team(s) Japan
Iraq (1 title each) | ||
The AFC U-23 Championship (also known as the AFC U-23 Asian Cup) is an international football tournament held by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The first edition was initially set to be held in 2013 and its qualification matches in 2012, but the finals tournament was postponed to be played in January 2014 due to the 2013 EAFF East Asian Cup.
Contents
The tournament is planned to be held every two years. The 2016 tournament doubled as the 2016 Olympic qualifiers, where the top 3 teams qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The 2016 edition took place in January 2016. The tournament was also renamed from the "AFC U-22 Championship" to the "AFC U-23 Championship".
Format
The overview of the competition format in the 2016 tournament was as follows:
The host country will be rotated by regions: the region for the first tournament will be decided by draw.
In addition, players who participated in a higher age group competition (this tournament and/or AFC U-19 Championship) are ineligible for participating in AFC U-16 Championship.