The 2018 African Nations Championship qualification was a men's football competition which decided the participating teams of the 2018 African Nations Championship. Only national team players who were playing in their country's own domestic league were eligible to compete in the tournament.
A total of sixteen teams qualified to play in the final tournament.
Chad withdrew on 27 March 2016, but however, on 24 May 2016, Chad announced that they would not be able to qualify for CHAN 2018, and São Tomé and Príncipe officially entered the qualification, along with Equatorial Guinea.
Egypt were expected to withdraw from the CHAN 2018, but however, on 4 June 2016, it was announced that Egypt would participate in the CHAN 2018 qualification.
On 12 March 2017, the Football Association of Malawi announced their senior national football team would withdraw from the competition due to the lack of funding.[2] However, they later announced its reversal of this decision and would continue to compete.[3]
Kenya were the original hosts and would have qualified automatically. However, on 23 September 2017, the CAF decided to withdraw their hosting rights due to a lack of progress with preparations.[4][5]
Morocco were named as the new hosts on 14 October 2017.[6] Since they had already qualified in the North Zone, their spot in the final tournament was re-allocated to Egypt, which lost to Morocco in the North Zone final qualifying round.[7] However, Egypt declined to participate citing a "congested domestic calendar".[8] As a result, the spot was reverted to Central-East Zone (as originally three teams would participate including Kenya as original hosts), and would go to the winner of a play-off between Ethiopia and Rwanda, the two teams which lost in the Central-East Zone final qualifying round.[9]
Qualification ties were played on a home-and-away two-legged basis. If the aggregate score was tied after the second leg, the away goals rule would be applied, and if still level, the penalty shoot-out would be used to determine the winner (no extra time would be played).[12]