Ghana’s Accra Sports Stadium has been cleared by the Confederation of African Football to host international matches again, restoring the country’s most recognisable football venue to the list of approved grounds just in time for the Black Stars’ 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign, AhotorSports can confirm.
The certification follows months of rehabilitation work by the National Sports Authority and ends a stretch of uncertainty in which the stadium had lost its CAF approval and Ghana had been forced to contemplate alternative venues for home fixtures.
The 40,000-capacity all-seater stadium in Accra, opened in 1961 and last comprehensively rebuilt ahead of the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations, has long served as the traditional home of the national team as well as clubs such as Hearts of Oak. In recent years the facility had fallen short of CAF and FIFA requirements covering the playing surface, spectator seating, washrooms, floodlighting, media facilities and structural safety.
Officials closed the ground to domestic league football so that work could be completed without interruption. Ghana Premier League sides that had expected to use it, including Hearts of Oak, were directed to find other venues such as the University of Ghana Stadium. Greengrass Technologies was engaged on the pitch, while broader repairs addressed corrosion, lighting and spectator amenities.
Sports Minister Kofi Adams and National Sports Authority Director-General Yaw Ampofo Ankrah inspected the site in mid-September as the deadline approached.
The timing is tight. Ghana open their Group C campaign away to Côte d’Ivoire on 24 September 2026 at the Stade de la Paix in Bouaké before returning three days later to host The Gambia at the Accra Sports Stadium on 27 September. That home fixture will be the first competitive international at the venue under the renewed certification.
The Black Stars, who missed the 2025 tournament in Morocco and thereby ended a qualification streak that had stretched back to 2004, sit in a demanding group with Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia and Somalia. The top two sides from each of the twelve qualifying groups will advance to the finals, co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda from 19 June to 17 July 2027.
Even as CAF restored approval, public concern about the stadium’s condition had not entirely disappeared. Berekum West MP Dickson Kyere-Duah had recently labelled the facility a death trap after an inspection, and National Sports Authority board chairman Professor Fred Awaah used similar language, arguing that wholesale reconstruction would have been preferable if resources allowed.
Those remarks underscored a wider infrastructure problem: Ghana currently has no stadium that fully satisfies both CAF and FIFA standards without ongoing remedial work. The latest clearance therefore represents both a practical necessity and a temporary solution while longer-term plans, including government allocations for new stadia, move forward.
The restored status of Accra Sports Stadium has already drawn interest beyond Ghana. Niger has received permission to stage its 2027 AFCON qualifying home matches there after being drawn in Group A with Morocco, Gabon and Lesotho. Somalia, which shares Group C with Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and The Gambia and lacks a CAF-approved venue of its own, has formally written to the National Sports Authority seeking the same arrangement.
If granted, Accra could host several matches involving teams from Ghana’s own qualifying group, turning the capital into a regional hub for the campaign.