The young Ivorian Real Madrid player Yan Diomande is among the nine nominees for the 2026 Young African Player of the Year award, according to Football Presse. The winner will be revealed on 7 December in Lagos, at the CAF Awards.
The list of nominees is out, and it gives pride of place to the continent’s young talents. According to Football Presse, nine players are in the running, including the Ivorian Yan Diomande. Among the other contenders are the Algerian midfielder Ibrahim Maza and his Cameroonian teammate Christian Kofane, both at Bayer Leverkusen, the Moroccan midfielder Ayoub Bouaddi (Manchester City) and the Senegalese striker Ibrahim Mbaye (Aston Villa).
The Ghanaian Caleb Yirenkyi, a Coventry City midfielder, completes the list. The winner will be unveiled at the CAF Awards in Lagos on 7 December 2026.
Two representatives each for Ivory Coast and Morocco
The geographical spread of this short-list, as presented by Football Presse, puts Ivory Coast and Morocco at the top with two representatives each. Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Mali and Senegal have one apiece.
Besides Diomande, Ivory Coast therefore have a second candidate, while Morocco field two, including Bouaddi. Cameroon are represented by Kofane, Maza’s teammate at Leverkusen, and Senegal by Mbaye.
Yirenkyi’s path, via Nordsjaelland
Among these nine names, the Ghanaian Caleb Yirenkyi, 20, first caught the eye at Nordsjaelland before joining Coventry City last summer. According to Football Presse, he scored a decisive goal in stoppage time against Panama at the 2026 World Cup with Ghana.
Eight of the nine nominees play in Europe. The others are Christ Inao (Fiorentina), Hamza Abdelkarim (Barcelona), Ismael Kamissoko (Étoiles Mandé) and Abdellah Ouazane (Ajax).
The date in Lagos: 7 December
The CAF Awards ceremony will be held in Lagos on 7 December 2026, according to Football Presse. It is there that the name of the Young African Player of the Year will be made official.
In the meantime, the qualifiers calendar moves on. On 14 November 2026, Egypt face Malawi in the 2027 AFCON qualifiers. The same day, Nigeria face Tanzania, before a trip to Tanzania on 17 November, according to Qiumiwu.com.