Ghana face a challenging path to secure a spot in the 2026 World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
This comes as a result of the qualification format set by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for African teams.
The continent will have a total of nine teams, with the possibility of a 10th team, participating in the upcoming World Cup.
Caf has decided that the qualifiers will consist of nine groups, each comprising six teams. The top nine teams from each group will directly qualify for the FIFA World Cup.
To determine the tenth representative from Africa, CAF introduced an additional opportunity. The four best second-placed teams from the groups will enter a playoff.
The winner of this playoff will then face a team from the CONCACAF zone for a chance to secure the tenth and final spot in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The qualifiers are scheduled to take place from November 2023 to November 2025, spanning a period of two years.
The first and second matchdays are set to be played in November 2023, followed by the third and fourth matchdays in June 2024. From the fifth to the tenth matchday, matches will be held throughout the entirety of 2025.
Black Stars, having qualified for four of the last five World Cups, will be aiming to make their fifth appearance. They appeared in the last World Cup in Qatar, suffering a group stage exit after finishing bottom of the group comprising Portugal, South Korea and Uruguay.