The Africa Cup of Nations is scheduled to kick off on Saturday, January 13, and will end with the final on February 11. There’s massive international interest in this event, and accordingly, it will be covered heavily on sports channels around the world. Below, we’ll explain how you can watch the Africa Cup of Nations online from anywhere.
Note that this post will only recommend official sources. Major sporting events are almost always available on shady streaming sites but we don’t recommend using these. Usually, these sites only offer laggy, low-resolution streams and their videos can be taken offline at any moment for copyright violation. As such, you might not even get to see which team wins a particular match. With so many international broadcasters, there’s no reason to resort to unreliable, third-party streams.
All of the services showing the AFCON are region-locked. This means you’ll need a VPN to access them from outside of their respective countries.
How to watch the AFCON with a VPN
New to VPNs and not sure how to get started? Just follow the steps below to bypass regional restrictions and stream whatever you want, wherever you are in the world:
- First of all, sign up for a suitable VPN. We recommend NordVPN but Surfshark and ExpressVPN are two quality alternatives for live sports streaming.
- Next, download and install the VPN software. Providers offer a different app for each operating system, so make sure to get the correct version.
- Decide which AFCON broadcaster you’d like to use abroad. We cover a number of options further below in this post.
- Log in to the app and connect to one of your VPN’s servers in the required location. For instance, you’d use a US server to unblock beIN Sports.
- Try streaming video on your chosen site. It should load instantly but if not, you can fix most issues by clearing your browser’s cookies and cache then reloading the page.
You should note that Senegal vs. Algeria will be broadcast live. For this reason, it’s important to test your VPN and make sure it works well in advance of kickoff time. In doing so, you ensure that if anything goes wrong, you’ll still have time to get help from your VPN’s customer support team and might not have to miss the start of the match.
How to stream the Africa Cup of Nations online from abroad
This tournament will be shown in dozens of countries, but each has its own official broadcasters. Take a look below to find out how to watch the Africa Cup of Nations online in your country:
USA & Canada
beIN Sports is the official AFCON broadcaster in the US and Canada. It’ll be showing the Cup of Nations live online, in both English and Spanish. If beIN Sports is already included in your cable TV package, you can simply sign in and start streaming immediately at no added cost.
Luckily, there are ways to watch, even if you don’t have cable. You can stream beIN Sports via the following TV streaming services: FuboTV (USD $79.99/month), Sling TV ($40 base + $11 Sports Extra add-on), and YouTube TV ($72.99 + $10.99 Sports Plus add-on). All of these services offer free trials so you should be able to stream at least some of the AFCON live online for free.
beIN Sports, fuboTV, Sling TV, and YouTube TV are only available in the US. As such, you’ll have to either be in the US or connected to a US VPN server in order to watch. NordVPN works with the above services and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. That way, you can fully test it out for yourself, risk-free.
UK
British soccer fans will be able to watch the AFCON tournament live on Sky Sports. If you already subscribe to Sky Sports, you can watch online at no added cost, but otherwise, you’ll have to sign up with Now, Sky’s over-the-top streaming service. You’ll need the Sports package which currently costs GBP £26 a month or £11.99 for 24 hours. This includes all 11 Sky Sports channels.
Sky Sports and Now are both geo-blocked. As a result, you’ll have to use a VPN to get a UK IP address to securely access them from outside of the UK.
Sub-Saharan Africa
You should note that some Sub-Saharan African countries have their own broadcasters. For instance, SABC will show this tournament in South Africa. However, SuperSport is the only broadcaster in many Sub-Saharan African countries.
SuperSport will offer both English and Portuguese commentary. The problem is that to stream SuperSport, you need a DStv account. Unfortunately, registering for DStv involves having services installed at your home, and the company only operates in Sub-Saharan Africa. This makes it effectively impossible to access SuperSport unless you usually live in a supported Sub-Saharan African country.
Both SABC and SuperSport are region-locked. However, you can still access these platforms from abroad by connecting to a VPN server in your home country.
Other locations
Don’t worry if we haven’t mentioned your country above. The Africa Cup of Nations will be shown all over the world; there are just too many countries to address individually. However, Wikipedia has an up-to-date list of international AFCON broadcasters which makes it easy to find out which networks are showing the tournament in your country.
How does the Africa Cup of Nations tournament work?
The AFCON format is pretty straightforward. There are 24 teams in total: the host country (this year, Ivory Coast) and 23 other teams who won their place in a qualifying tournament earlier in the year. These teams are split into six groups of four, and every team in a group plays each other once. Afterwards, the sixteen teams with the most points progress to the knockout stage.
From here, a single loss spells the end of a team’s AFCON journey. The only exception is after the semi-finals, wherein the two eliminated teams will compete for third place. In the event that a game ends in a draw, extra time will be played, and finally, the winner will be decided by penalty shootout.
Africa Cup of Nations: full schedule
Here is the full schedule for the Africa Cup of Nations. Of course, knockout stage matchups are still to be determined (following the completion of the group stage). The first fixture to be played features the host country, Ivory Coast vs Guinea-Bissau at the Alassane Ouattara Stadium in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
