The 2025 AFC U-17 Asian Cup will be the 20th edition of the AFC U-17 Asian Cup (including previous editions of the AFC U-16 Championship and AFC U-17 Championship), the biennial international youth football championship organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the men's under-17 national teams of Asia.
On 24 May 2024, the AFC announced that Saudi Arabia would host the tournament.
A total of 16 teams will play in the tournament. The top eight teams of the tournament (i.e. all quarter-finalists) will qualify for the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup in Qatar as the AFC representatives besides Qatar who qualified automatically as the host.
Japan are the title holders, having won the title in 2023.
The draw of the final tournament was held on 23 January 2025 at the AFC Hall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The 16 teams was drawn into four groups of four teams, with the teams seeded according to their performance in the 2023 AFC U-17 Asian Cup final tournament and qualification, with the hosts Saudi Arabia automatically seeded and assigned to Position A1 in the draw.
The group winners and runners-up advance to the quarter-finals and qualified for the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup.
Tiebreakers
Teams are to be ranked according to points (3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 points for a loss), and if tied on points, the following tie-breaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings:
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams were tied and they met in the last round of the group;
Disciplinary points (yellow card = 1 point, red card as a result of two yellow cards = 3 points, direct red card = 3 points, yellow card followed by direct red card = 4 points);
