Africa’s biggest football night is coming to Lagos, and no Nigerian man is in the main race.
The 2026 CAF Awards will be held on Wednesday 2 December at the Professor Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Arts, the restored National Theatre in Iganmu, from 7pm. Nigeria is hosting after Morocco staged the ceremony for four years running.
CAF moved the date forward this week. It had been fixed for 7 December when the Executive Committee set it in October. No official reason was given for the change, though The Guardian Nigeria reported, citing a CAF official, that European clubs were unlikely to release players for a Monday in December, and that an earlier date gives nominees a better chance of turning up.
Who is nominated
Ten men are up for African Player of the Year: Amad Diallo (Côte d’Ivoire, Manchester United), Yoane Wissa (DR Congo, Newcastle United), Antoine Semenyo (Ghana, Manchester City), Ismael Saibari (Morocco, Bayern Munich), Achraf Hakimi (Morocco, Paris Saint-Germain), Brahim Diaz (Morocco, Real Madrid), Ismaila Sarr (Senegal, Crystal Palace), Pape Gueye (Senegal, Villarreal), Sadio Mané (Senegal, Al-Nassr) and Teboho Mokoena (South Africa, Mamelodi Sundowns).
Senegal and Morocco have three nominees each. Nigeria has none.
The country’s representation at its own party rests with the women. Janet Akekoromowei and Oluwakemi Adegbuyi are both nominated for Women’s Young Player of the Year, and Christiana Uzoma, the Edo Queens goalkeeper, is up for Women’s Goalkeeper of the Year.
The full night covers Goalkeeper, Interclub Player, Coach, Young Player, National Team and Club of the Year on the men’s side, each with ten nominees, alongside the women’s categories.
What Lagos gets out of it
Hosting is the point. The ceremony brings CAF’s executive, continental federation officials, club delegations and whichever players travel into Lagos for a night in the first week of December, the busiest week in the Nigerian calendar for visitors.
It also puts the National Theatre back on television across the continent. The building reopened after a long restoration, and a CAF broadcast from Iganmu is the kind of exposure a venue cannot buy.
CAF is in the country before then too. Its Ordinary General Assembly was set for 21 November in Nigeria, two weeks ahead of the awards.
For Nigerian football, though, the arithmetic is hard to dress up. The host nation will hand out the continent’s biggest individual prize at home without a single man in contention for it, in a year when three Senegalese and three Moroccans made the shortlist.
