The Carry1st Africa Cup 2026 Touches Down Nigeria July 31st

Four regions are done. Four champions are already booked. And now the road runs through Lagos — but before any Nigerian team gets near that stage, they have to survive their own backyard first.

The Nigeria qualifier of the Carry1st Africa Cup 2026 opens its group stage on Friday, 31 July, and registration shuts the day before it starts. Twenty-five teams have confirmed so far. Two of them will fly out of this bracket and into the Grand Finals. The other twenty-three go home with stories.

Where the tournament stands

The 2026 Cup was built around a simple line: five regions, one champion. Qualifiers opened on 19 June, and by the end of July the map had mostly filled in.

• West Africa — Culture Esports took the region, with Ghana's Mighty Aura taking the second slot. Twenty countries, from Cape Verde to Cameroon, all of it online.

• North Africa — Paradox Gaming came through Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. If the name rings a bell, it should. Paradox were the only side to take a map off B3AR in the 2025 final, and they took two.

• East Africa — Up Against Hell Monarchs TEF won the LAN finale in Nairobi on 26 July, hosted at the Homeboyz Institute of Technology.

• Southern Africa — Awuah Gaming won at the ACGL LAN finale on 19 July, staged inside the African Gaming Championship in Cape Town, with Cyclone Esports claiming the region's second slot.

Nigeria is the last region standing, and it is the only one still taking sign-ups. West Africa, Southern Africa and Nigeria each carry two Grand Finals slots; North and East Africa carry one apiece. Eight teams, one stage, Lagos, 5–6 September.

How we got here

It is worth remembering how small this was two years ago.

The first Carry1st Africa Cup, announced in May 2024, was a six-country affair — Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa — with a $15,000 pool and an MVP cheque of $1,000. Qualifiers ran online through June and July, and the whole thing landed at a LAN in Nairobi that November. Six national champions, one weekend. Nigeria sent Sierra 7, who had ended Rage Esports' unbeaten run to get there. Ghana sent Aura 233, who had not dropped a single map all the way through.

At the time, Carry1st's co-founder Cordel Robbin-Coker framed it as a vision of "uniting the continent's gamers." That reads like standard launch copy until you look at what happened next.

In September 2025, the Cup came to Nigerian soil and B3AR Clan won it, dropping only two maps across the entire bracket. Eclipse Gaming finished third off a last-minute qualification. Sierra 7 finished fourth. And B3AR went on to become the first African team to qualify for the Call of Duty: Mobile World Championship — the moment that turned this from a regional tournament into a genuine pipeline.

Which brings us to 2026: the prize pool doubled to $30,000, the largest for a mobile FPS event on the continent. Five regions instead of six countries. Two live LANs instead of one. And a Grand Finals weekend on home soil, with a route to the CODM World Championship 2026 and its $500,000 global pool waiting at the end of it.

Rosters have moved around in the meantime, as they do. Paradox Gaming picked up the players from the 2025 champion side, while former Paradox man Daniello went to Cyclone for the Southern Africa run — and came out of Cape Town with a Grand Finals slot of his own. The names on the jerseys change faster than the names on the trophies.

The Nigerian field

Twenty-five teams have confirmed for the Nigeria qualifier, and the list has both ends of the spectrum on it.

SYRIX Sierra 7 are the obvious anchor — two-time national champions, veterans of every edition of this Cup, fourth at last year's continental final. Eclipse Gaming are the other name that carries weight, having scrapped their way to a podium finish in 2025 after barely making the field. Around them sit se7en Esports, Virtue, X-Nonagon Esports, OUTLAWS, Lionheart Esport, Crown Guard, Black Halo, Olympus, LeGIØN, Shadow Wolves, Hail Mary, Disruptors and the rest, including a university side in TRIBE UNIILAG.

That mix is the point. A 16-team double-elimination playoff bracket with a $2,000 regional pool and two continental slots on the line is exactly the kind of format where an unseeded squad with good comms can wreck somebody's season.

For teams still thinking about signing up

Read this part twice, because most disqualifications in Nigerian brackets are administrative, not competitive.

The deadline. Sign-ups close on 30 July at 18:00 WAT. There is no soft extension implied anywhere on the page.

The dates.

• Group Stage: Fixture 1 — Friday 31 July, 19:00 WAT; Fixture 2 — Saturday 1 August, 18:00 WAT; Fixture 3 — Sunday 2 August, 18:00 WAT

• Playoffs Phase 1: 8–9 August, three rounds each day from 16:00 WAT

• Playoffs Phase 2: 16 August — UB Round 4 at 16:00, LB Round 6 at 18:00, Grand Finals at 20:00 WAT

Phase 2 runs on a rolling schedule, so start times shift with whatever match precedes yours. Be ready thirty minutes early.

The format. Round robin groups of up to four, 5v5, best-of-five. Depending on final entry numbers, the top one to four teams from each group progress — that gets confirmed after registration closes. Playoffs are a 16-team double-elimination bracket seeded on group finish. Ties in groups break on head-to-head, then map differential, then round differential.

Eligibility. All players must compete from within Nigeria — your passport does not have to be Nigerian, but your location does. Each team may field a maximum of two players without African citizenship or residency. Every participant must have turned 18 on or before 29 March 2026, and must have submitted their CODM account details through the tournament portal. Squads are five players plus up to one substitute, and only registered players may compete. You may only enter one regional qualifier — no double-dipping across regions.

Rosters lock the moment the tournament starts. No swaps, no additions.

The money. $2,000 across the Nigeria qualifier: $800 for first, $500 for second, $300 for third, $200 for fourth, and $100 each for fifth and sixth. First and second also take the Grand Finale LAN slots, which is the part that actually matters.

Broadcast discipline. Punctuality timers apply to all broadcast matches. You get ten minutes to be in-game and ready from the scheduled start. Miss it and a five-minute timer starts before Map 1 is forfeited; miss that and another five minutes runs before the entire series goes. There is also a cumulative ten-minute tech timer spanning the whole series — burn through it and the game continues 4v5 or is forfeited outright. If something breaks, open a ticket on the tournament Discord rather than arguing in match chat.

What is actually on the line

A Nigerian team has never won this thing. Sierra 7 have come close twice. Eclipse got to a podium. B3AR lifted the trophy on Nigerian soil last year and it still was not a Nigerian side.

This time the Grand Finals are in Lagos, in September, with a home crowd — and against six teams who have already booked their seats: Culture Esports, Mighty Aura, Paradox Gaming, Up Against Hell Monarchs TEF, Awuah Gaming and Cyclone Esports. Two of those six have already proven they can win under stage lights and crowd noise. Two Nigerian teams get to be in that room.

Registration closes tomorrow on cup.carry1st.com