Nepal have been granted an indirect slot for the 2026-27 season of the AFC Challenge League, as revealed by the Asian Football Confederation in a social media post on Thursday. But Nepal will most likely lose the slot in the third-tier continental club competition of Asia, again.

The Asian Football Confederation organises three club competitions annually. AFC Champions League Elite is the top-tier competition. Saudi club Al-Ahli won the league’s 2025-26 season, defeating Japan’s Machida Zelvia on April 25.

AFC Champions League Two is the second-tier club tournament in Asia. Cristiano Ronaldo and his club Al-Nassr could lift the trophy of the 2025-26 AFC Champions League Two if they defeat Japan’s Gamba Osaka in the final on May 17.

Then comes the AFC Challenge League, where the Kuwaiti club Al-Kuwait are facing Cambodia’s PKR Svay Rieng in the final of the 2025-26 season on May 13.

The Asian countries, divided into East and West, are granted slots to the three continental club tournaments based on their ranking.

Japan and Saudi Arabia get the most number of slots—three direct and two indirect for the Champions League Elite and one direct for the Champions League Two. Nepal, who fall in the West category, get one slot, that too an indirect one for the Challenge League.

An indirect slot means that the Nepali club will have to play a playoff match before entering the tournament’s group stage. Only the winner of the top division club football tournament of the country can represent Nepal in the tournament.

Nepal’s Church Boys United, winner of the 2023 Martyr’s Memorial ‘A’ Division League, entered the Asian tournament in 2024 and were denied entry to the group stage after getting knocked out by Bhutan’s Paro FC, which had Japan’s legendary midfielder Keisuke Honda, at a muddy Dasharath Stadium in Kathmandu on August 13, 2024.

Meanwhile, there was no participation from a Nepali club in the ongoing 2025-26 season of the Challenge League because the governing body of Nepali football had not organised the domestic club competition after 2023.

And it is specifically why Nepal will not be able to utilise the slot in the Challenge League playoff for the 2026-27 season as well.

The 2026-27 season group stage is scheduled to begin in October, after qualifying events are concluded in July and August.

It is not that ANFA wanted to miss out on the tournament for consecutive seasons. The Pankaj Bikram Nembang-led body even decided to brand the National League as the top-division domestic tournament for 2025-26, and let the winner participate in the 2026-27 Challenge League.

But with the National League postponed last month after intervention from the Department of Immigration, citing that the clubs were fielding foreign players without specific visas, that move went in vain.

In April last year, ANFA had decided to organise a knockout tournament between A-Division clubs and send the winner to the continental tournament. That too was not realised.

But even if the domestic top-division tournament was organised in Nepal, it does not mean that the winner would have easily participated in the Challenge League. It is because of the AFC Club licensing process.

Currently, there is not a single club in Nepal with an AFC license, a procedure that ensures a club has fulfilled the necessary standards set by the AFC.

“Without the AFC club license, winning the league doesn’t guarantee participation in the continental tournament,” Karma Tsering Sherpa, president of Himalayan Sherpa Club, said during a meeting with the then Minister for Youth and Sports in December last year. Sherpa, who is also the former president of ANFA, had argued that the process for the AFC license was a headache as it needed a club to fulfil several criteria, which was impossible without effective support from ANFA and the state.

ANFA and clubs are so desperate for the continental tournament that the AFC license was distributed to clubs without fulfilling the standards in 2019. As a result, ANFA was slapped with a USD30,000 fine by the AFC.

Why do the clubs and ANFA try everything they can to participate in the AFC tournament? There is no doubt that the club will get a major platform to showcase their skills against the best clubs from across Asia. But is it all?

In the preliminary stage, the away club gets a travel subsidy of USD50,000. In the group stage, a club is given a participation fee of USD100,000 (Rs15,180,360) alongside a performance bonus of USD20,000 to the winning team during matches.

A club that reaches the quarter-final and semi-final of the Challenge League will get an extra USD80,000 and USD120,000, respectively.

“The champion will get USD1 million, and the runner-up will receive USD50,000,” reads the Competition Regulations for the AFC Challenge League 2025/26. It means that the bonuses could get increased for 2026/27.

And it seems that a Nepali club will neither get the perks of participation in the Challenge League for the upcoming season nor will they be able to put up a challenge against some of the best clubs in Asia.

Nepal have been participating in the Asian club tournament since the Asian Club Championship in 1985-86. Nepal’s winning clubs then participated in the AFC President Cup since its inaugural edition in 2005, and then in the rebranded AFC Cup since 2015.

The President Cup turned to the AFC Cup before being renamed as the AFC Challenge League in the 2024-25 season. The biggest results for a Nepali club in the continental tournament have been in the AFC President Cup in 2005, 2007 and 2008, by Three Star Club and Nepal Police Club, which was Mahendra Police Club until 2007.

Three Star and Police had reached the semi-final in 2005 and 2008, respectively, while Police finished as the runner-up in 2007.

Unless the domestic league structure and club licensing standards are resolved soon, continental football will remain an opportunity granted on paper but lost in practice for Nepal.