Women's football in the Arab world in 2026 is a story of one country that has built a full system and a region that is mostly still building foundations. Morocco is the highest-ranked of the Arab women's national teams covered here and has played at a World Cup. It has also reached the last four of all three Women's Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) tournaments it hosted, including two finals. Most other Arab federations sit far lower in the FIFA ranking, with younger leagues and less money flowing into clubs.
The gap comes down to structures, starting with who pays the players and whether the rules let every player take the field.
Where Arab women's national teams rank in 2026
In this article, the Arab world means the 22 members of the Arab League. The table lists nine of their federations as they appear on FIFA's country pages in the latest FIFA ranking, viewed on 27 October 2026. Morocco leads them, and only three of the nine sit inside the top 80. The next official update is due on 7 December 2026.
| Country | FIFA position | Points | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morocco | 64th | 1,384.71 | FIFA |
| Algeria | 73rd | 1,346.06 | FIFA |
| Jordan | 79th | 1,283.62 | FIFA |
| Tunisia | 107th | 1,174.95 | FIFA |
| Egypt | 113th | 1,159.69 | FIFA |
| UAE | 125th | 1,126.67 | FIFA |
| Palestine | 127th | 1,111.40 | FIFA |
| Lebanon | 130th | 1,100.95 | FIFA |
| Saudi Arabia | 157th | 980.32 | FIFA |
Morocco's position is not its peak: its highest ever FIFA placing is 52nd and its lowest is 83rd, according to FIFA's Morocco page. Saudi Arabia is a newcomer, having entered the ranking for the first time at 171st in March 2023.
FIFA's ranking measures national team results and says little about domestic leagues, which is where Morocco differs most from its neighbours.
How Morocco built a full system
Morocco's rise rests on a deliberate decision to fund the club game, then use national team tournaments to put it in front of large crowds. For a closer look at that model, see the full Morocco analysis.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| By 2020 | FRMF funding wages at 44 women's clubs |
| Jul 2022 | Morocco hosts WAFCON and reaches the final |
| Jul-Aug 2023 | First Arab team at a Women's World Cup; reaches the round of 16 |
| Jul 2025 | Second WAFCON final on home soil, lost 3-2 to Nigeria |
| Nov 2025 | AS FAR wins a second CAF Women's Champions League |
| Aug 2026 | Fourth at a home WAFCON; qualified for the 2027 World Cup |
Paying clubs and players
Kelly Lindsey, head of women's football at the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF), gave the details in a 2020 FIFPRO interview republished by the Swiss players' union SAFP. The federation was funding the wages of players and staff at 44 clubs, 14 in the first division and 30 in the second. Clubs had to carry a 25-player roster, and the club funding came to about USD 6 million a year, according to that interview.
A separate report from This Is Africa put the 2020-21 women's football budget at six million euros, up from one million. The two figures come from different sources and use different currencies. Neither should be read as an official published FRMF budget.
A guaranteed wage turns football from a hobby squeezed around work or study into a job, and a minimum roster forces clubs to develop squads rather than a handful of starters.
AS FAR's continental titles
AS FAR won the CAF Women's Champions League in 2025, beating ASEC Mimosas 2-1 in Ismailia on 21 November 2025. It was their second title, after 2022.
Home tournaments and a run of finals
As host, Morocco reached the WAFCON 2022 final, the first Arab team to do so, losing 2-1 to South Africa in Rabat on 23 July 2022.
Three years later it was back in a final in Rabat. In the WAFCON 2024 final, played on 26 July 2025, Nigeria beat Morocco 3-2 after Morocco had led 2-0, giving Nigeria a 10th title.
Morocco then hosted WAFCON 2026, its third straight edition. It was the first with 16 teams, postponed from March and played from 26 July to 16 August 2026. All four semi-finalists qualified for the 2027 Women's World Cup.
Morocco reached the semi-finals but finished fourth. In the third-place play-off, Algeria drew 1-1 with Morocco and won 3-2 on penalties. Morocco, Cameroon, Malawi and Algeria all qualified for Brazil, and Cameroon won the final 3-0 against Malawi.
The 2023 World Cup breakthrough
Morocco was the first Arab country to qualify for a Women's World Cup, and the team opened with a 6-0 defeat to Germany before beating Korea Republic 1-0. Ghizlane Chebbak said the team was "honored to be the first Arab country to take part," in the AP report carried by NBC Miami.
On 3 August 2023, Anissa Lahmari scored in first-half stoppage time to beat Colombia 1-0, making Morocco the first Arab and North African team to reach a Women's World Cup knockout stage. The run ended in the round of 16, where France won 4-0 at Hindmarsh Stadium in Adelaide on 8 August.
Why most Arab federations are at an earlier stage
Outside Morocco, most Arab women's programmes are still building the institutions Morocco put in place years ago. Algeria shows how quickly a gap can narrow: ranked 73rd, it beat Morocco on penalties for third place at WAFCON 2026 and qualified for the 2027 World Cup. Lebanon, the author's former national team, sits 130th.
Young leagues and late starts
Saudi Arabia is the clearest example of a late start backed by new institutions. The Saudi Arabian Football Federation announced its Women's Premier League on 15 September 2022, with eight teams and a season starting on 13 October 2022. A Division One of 17 teams in three regions launched alongside it. The national team joined the FIFA ranking the following March and now sits 157th. The Saudi women's football analysis covers that model in detail.
Jordan, ranked 79th, has the third-best national team in the table and a club presence in Asia. Etihad Club took part in the preliminary stage of the AFC Women's Champions League 2025/26 and lost 2-0 to Lion City Sailors on 25 August 2025.
Opportunity and social norms
A common explanation for the gap is social conservatism. Research from the Gulf complicates that view. Georgetown University's Center for International and Regional Studies in Qatar argues that lack of opportunity, not only social norms, held women back in Qatar.
Charlotte Lysa's chapter in Sport, Politics and Society in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines how Qatari female footballers negotiate gendered expectations around their participation. Both studies concern Qatar. Read alongside Morocco's record, they suggest that where leagues, pitches and paid pathways exist, the social debate shifts, a reading that still needs testing across the region.
A data gap that hides the problem
FIFA's Women's Football Member Associations Survey, released in August 2023, counted about 16.6 million organised women and girl players worldwide, up nearly a quarter on 2019. FIFA reports by confederation, and Arab federations are split between the Asian and African confederations, so the survey offers no Arab-world breakdown. No regional dataset on players' pay was found for this article.
Without that baseline, federations can announce programmes without anyone being able to measure whether player numbers or wages actually grew.
Visibility: what Morocco's crowds show
Morocco's results have been matched by attendance. The WAFCON 2022 final in Rabat drew around 50,000 fans, a WAFCON attendance record, and the semi-final between Morocco and Nigeria drew 45,562.
A full stadium is evidence of an audience that sponsors and broadcasters can price, and it makes continued public funding easier to defend. It also shows girls watching from the stands that the game can be a career.
Comparable attendance figures for women's matches elsewhere in the Arab world are not readily available, so the visibility of other national teams is hard to measure. Dr. Toufaily discusses these questions in her television and podcast interviews.
The hijab question
International football settled the head-cover question in 2014. On 1 March 2014 in Zurich, the IFAB and FIFA authorised head covers for religious reasons, after a two-year trial requested by the Asian Football Confederation. The covers must be basic in design and the same colour as the jersey.
The rule change reached the biggest stage in 2023, when Morocco's Nouhaila Benzina became the first player to wear a hijab at a senior Women's World Cup, against Korea Republic on 30 July.
In France, the Conseil d'État upheld the French Football Federation's ban on visible religious signs in matches on 29 June 2023. It described the rule, article 1 of the federation's rules and in force since 2016, as "adapté et proportionné" (appropriate and proportionate). In practice, a player cannot wear a hijab in French federation matches, even though she could wear one at a World Cup.
The global rulebook permits head covers, and a national federation can still restrict them within its own competitions. For players in or from the Arab world, where they can play may depend on which federation's rules apply.
What to watch in 2026 and 2027
On 7 December 2026, FIFA is due to publish its next official women's ranking, the first full read on where the region stands after the summer's continental tournaments.
The bigger test is the 2027 Women's World Cup in Brazil. Two Arab teams, Morocco and Algeria, have qualified. Morocco will be measured against its 2023 round-of-16 run. Algeria will be playing to show that a second Arab system can compete at that level.
Saudi Arabia's league launched only in 2022, and Jordan's clubs are still chasing results in Asian competition. Morocco's record suggests that federations which put money into clubs will be best placed to close the gap; publishing player and pay data would let outsiders check whether that money works. Country profiles are in the other articles on Arab women's football.