Introduction
The Castel Challenge Cup is a National Knockout Cup organised by the Football Association of Malawi (FAM). It is sponsored by Castel Malawi. The 2025/2026 edition kicked off with Preliminary Round in August 2025 and will run up to February 2026.
The Regional preliminary round is complete, and a total 559 teams; 12 National Division League teams and 51 Regional Leagues teams (16 from the South, 16 from the Centre, 13 from Eastern Region and 16 from the North) and 496 Districts teams from the 31 Districts took part in the Preliminaries.
The National draw will be held on Tuesday 9th December 2025 at the Mpira Village from 10 am. It will attract 32 teams with 16 coming from the Super League and the other 16 that have qualified from the Preliminary Round.
The qualified teams for the National draw are as follows:
Super League:
FCB Nyasa Big Bullets, Mighty Wanderers, Silver Strikers, Civil Service United, Karonga United, Ekhaya FC, Blue Eagles, Kamuzu Barracks, Chitipa United, Creck SC, Moyale FC, MAFCO FC, Goshen City Dedza Dynamos, Mzuzu City Hammers, Mighty Tigers, Songwe Border United
Regional Playoffs
South: Bangwe All Stars (NDL), Bereu Giants (Chikwawa District), Ndirande Stars ( NDL) and Nsanje United ( SRFL)
Central Region: Airborne Rangers (CRFL), Extreme FC ( CRFL), Namitete Zitha (NDL) and Shire Wimbe (CRFL)
Eastern Region: Prison United (ERFL), Red Lions (NDL), Ntaja Rangers (ERFL) and Ntaja United (NDL)
Northern Region: Chilumba Barracks (NDL), Chintheche United (NDL), Homesweepers (Nkhatabay District) and Lufita United ( Chitipa District).
The Draw
The draw will start with the round of 32 whereby the top eight Super League teams as per the log table of Monday 8th December 2025 namely: FCB Nyasa Big Bullets, Mighty Wanderers, Silver Strikers FC, Civil Service United, Karonga United, Ekhaya FC, Blue Eagles and Kamuzu Barracks will be seeded in the sense that they will not face each other.
They will be put in one pot and drawn against the other 24 teams (The remaining 8 Super League teams and the 16 teams from Regional Playoffs) in the other pot. However, during the draw involving the seeded teams there will be another draw to determine the home teams in the matches while the other draw the home team will be determined by the team drawn first.
In the round of 16, the winners of the round of 32 matches will face each other to determine the eight teams to qualify for the quarterfinals. The teams will be paired based on their match numbers with the winner of match number 1 facing winner of match number 16 in that order up to the last match pairing winner match number 8 and winner match number 9. In this round the winners of matches 9-16 will be home teams in the fixtures.
The quarterfinals and semifinal draw will be done after the round of 16 on dates to be announced.
For further information please contact:
FAM Competitions Department
Email: competitions@fam.mw
