The AFC Women's Asian Cup (formerly known as the AFC Women's Championship) is a quadrennial competition in
women's football for national teams which belong to the
Asian Football Confederation
The Asian Football Confederation is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in some countries/territories in Asia and Oceania. It has 47 member countries most of which are located in Asia. Australia, formerly in ...
(AFC). It is the oldest
women's international football competition and premier women's football competition in the AFC region for national teams. The competition is also known as the Asian Women's Football Championship and the Asian Women's Championship. 20 tournaments have been held, with the current champions being
China PR
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
. The competition also serves as Asian qualifying tournament for the
FIFA Women's World Cup
The FIFA Women's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association ( FIFA), the sport's international governing bo ...
.
History
The competition was set up by the ''
Asian Ladies Football Confederation
The Asian Football Confederation is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in some countries/territories in Asia and Oceania. It has 47 member countries most of which are located in Asia. Australia, formerly in ...
'' (ALFC), a part of the AFC responsible for women's football. The first competition was held in 1975 and was held every two years after this, except for a period in the 1980s where the competition was held every three years. The ALFC was initially a separate organisation but was absorbed into the AFC in 1986.
From 1975 to 1981, matches were 60 minutes in duration.
The competition has been dominated by countries from the Pacific Rim or Eastern Asia (including East and Southeast Asia), with the China women's national football team having won 9 times, including a series of 7 consecutive victories as of 2022 edition. Countries from Central and West Asia have been rather less successful, with only Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Jordan and Iran having qualified so far. Eastern Asia has also been far more frequent in participating in the
FIFA Women's World Cup
The FIFA Women's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association ( FIFA), the sport's international governing bo ...
, with five strongest women's teams of Asia (China, North Korea, Japan, Australia and South Korea) hail from this part.
The tournament frequency changed to every 4 years effective from 2010, after
AFC had announced that the Asian Cup will additionally serve as the qualification rounds of the
2015 FIFA Women's World Cup
The 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup was the seventh FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international soccer championship contested by the women's national teams of the member associations of FIFA. The tournament was hosted by Canada for the ...
.
Until
2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...
, teams were invited by the AFC to compete. From
2006
File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
, a separate qualification was established and the number of teams will be decided by the merit by qualification process. The name of the tournament was also changed to as the "''AFC Women's Asian Cup''", to reflect the change and reforms of the competition.
The tournament was expanded from eight teams to twelve starting from the
2022
File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...
edition.
Qualification
Format
All of the 47 members of the
AFC who have a women's national team are eligible to participate in the
qualification tournament.
Starting from
2022 edition, a total of twelve teams participate in the final tournament including the hosts, top three finishers of the previous edition and eight teams from the
qualification tournament.
Results
Notes
Performance by nation
Participating nations
Notes:
General statistics
Awards
Winning coaches
See also
*
AFF Women's Championship
The AFF Women's Championship is the competition in women's football organised by the ASEAN Football Federation, contested by the national teams of nations in Southeast Asia and Australia. The official tournament started in 2004, hosted by Vie ...
*
CAFA Women's Championship
*
EAFF E-1 Football Championship (women)
EAFF E-1 Football Championship is an international football competition in East Asia for national teams of the East Asian Football Federation (EAFF). The competition between women's national teams is held alongside men's competition.
History ...
*
SAFF Women's Championship
The SAFF Women's Championship, also called the ''South Asian Football Federation Women's Cup'', is the main association football competition of the women's national football teams, governed by the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF). All seve ...
*
WAFF Women's Championship
The West Asian Football Federation Women's Championship (), or simply WAFF Women's Championship, is an international women's association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of the West Asian Footba ...
*
AFC Asian Cup
The AFC Asian Cup is the primary association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), determining the continental champion of Asia. It is the second oldest cont ...
References
External links
Official website
Further reading
*
{{Asian Championships
Asian Football Confederation competitions for women's national teams
Asian championships
Recurring sporting events established in 1975
Association football events