Morocco Prepares Its Airports for AFCON 2025 Arrival Surge

The hope is that it’ll all just feel fairly straightforward: land, get through the airport safely and swiftly and be out into the AFCON atmosphere waiting for you outside.

With the Africa Cup of Nations 2025 just around the corner, Morocco’s airports are sneaking into tournament mode.

From Casablanca to Marrakech, the airport teams across the country have been quietly getting it ready for the next few weeks as fans, players and officials start arriving for the continent’s biggest football event set to kick off on December 21.

People working at the National Airports Office (ONDA) say they’ve been focusing on getting the basics right rather than flashy upgrades.

Behind the scenes, they’ve been adjusting the arrival routes, bringing in extra staff and stepping up communication with airlines to help deal with the expected surge in international flights. The aim is to get people through the airport a lot quicker and to make it easier to follow the signs and avoid the usual bottlenecks when thousands of fans all land at the same time.

For the fans making the trip over from abroad, help really shouldn’t be hard to find. Teams of airport staff who speak multiple languages will be standing by in the arrivals halls to point people in the right direction for transport links, city connections or making a day of a match.

For the national teams and officials, arrival times are being carefully juggled so that they don’t coincide with your average passenger traffic.

Putting its airport system through its paces

When it comes to the security side of things, airport authorities have got all the relevant agencies—customs, national security, and transport officials—working together like clockwork to make sure the airports are secure during the AFCON period. They’re stressing that while security is going up a notch, it’s still going to be pretty painless for people who are just passing through.

Beyond the tournament itself, AFCON 2025 is also seen as a kind of useful dry run. With Morocco hosting even more top-flight international events in the coming years, these next few weeks are a good chance to test the airport network under pressure.