Bafana Bafana Fixtures: Next Matches, Kick-off Times and Our Predictions

Bafana Bafana fixtures, with our picks

Date	Kick-off (SAST)	Fixture	Venue	Competition	Our pick	Confidence
Sat 26 Sep 2026	15:00	South Africa v Guinea	Orlando Stadium, Johannesburg	AFCON 2027 qualifier	South Africa	58% Good WON 2-1
Wed 30 Sep 2026	18:00	Eritrea v South Africa	Al Salam Stadium, Cairo	AFCON 2027 qualifier	South Africa	74% Strong
Sun 4 Oct 2026	20:00	Egypt v South Africa	Cairo International Stadium	International friendly	No pick	Not priced
Fri 13 Nov 2026	18:00	South Africa v Kenya	To be confirmed	AFCON 2027 qualifier	Pick closer to the date	Not yet priced
Tue 17 Nov 2026	To be confirmed	Kenya v South Africa	To be confirmed	AFCON 2027 qualifier	Pick closer to the date	Not yet priced
Fri 26 Mar 2027	To be confirmed	Guinea v South Africa	To be confirmed	AFCON 2027 qualifier	Pick closer to the date	Not yet priced
Tue 30 Mar 2027	To be confirmed	South Africa v Eritrea	To be confirmed	AFCON 2027 qualifier	Pick closer to the date	Not yet priced

Kick-off times converted from the UTC times carried on the ESPN international fixture feed on 24 September 2026, SAST being UTC plus two hours. Eritrea are the listed home side for the 30 September qualifier but the match is scheduled at a neutral ground in Egypt, which both the ESPN feed and the SAFA announcement state. These are the first international picks this site has ever published, so the column starts at zero and we say so rather than letting it look like a track record.

Why Guinea was a good pick, not a strong one, and Eritrea is strong

Result update, 26 September: South Africa beat Guinea 2-1, so our 58% pick landed. One result does not change our view below.

Correction, 26 September: An earlier version of this page listed the Guinea pick at 51%, a close call. The pick we published and graded in our public log was 58%, in our good band, and this page now matches it.

Fifty-eight percent on a home qualifier against Guinea is a real edge, but a modest one. It sits in our good band, where picks have historically landed about two times in three, and not in our strong band.

Two things kept it out of the strong band. The first is that this is a new manager first match. Hugo Broos stepped down on 31 July 2026 after taking South Africa to the World Cup round of 32, and Pitso Mosimane took over days before this camp. A first match under a new coach is the least predictable ninety minutes in international football, whoever the coach is, because nobody outside the camp knows the shape, the selection or the instructions. The second is that Guinea are not the kind of opponent a South African side brushes aside. There is no evidence in front of us that says favour the hosts heavily, so we do not.

Eritrea at 74 percent is a different question entirely. This is a side that reached the knockout stage of a World Cup three months ago against an opponent whose scheduled home fixture is being played in another country. That gap is wide enough to carry a strong-band figure, and our strong band is the part of the record we are least embarrassed by, running at 19 wins and 3 losses.

The Egypt friendly on 4 October gets no pick at all. Friendlies are played with rotating squads, unlimited substitutions and nothing riding on the result, and we do not have a model that prices that. We would rather publish nothing than publish a number we made up, which is the same reason the MMA section of this site carries no picks.

Where Bafana Bafana are in 2026

When	What happened
June 2026	South Africa reach the World Cup knockout stage for the first time in the country history, finishing second in Group A
Sun 28 June 2026	Canada 1-0 South Africa in the round of 32, and Bafana are eliminated
Fri 31 July 2026	Hugo Broos steps down as head coach after the tournament
September 2026	Pitso Mosimane takes over, and wins his first match back in charge, against Guinea on 26 September
Sat 26 September 2026	South Africa 2-1 Guinea at Orlando Stadium, as AFCON 2027 qualifying begins with a home win

The Canada result was confirmed against the official FIFA match report and independent live coverage. The coaching dates come from the reporting of Broos departure and from the SAFA announcement of the Guinea fixture. We are not publishing the three World Cup group scorelines, because the match reports we checked on 24 September 2026 did not agree on them, and a scoreline we cannot verify twice does not go on this site.

AFCON 2027 qualifying: Group D, and why only one team goes through

South Africa are in Group D with Guinea, Kenya and Eritrea. The Confederation of African Football confirmed this group in its official qualifier draw, and its matchday 1 schedule lists both South Africa v Guinea and Kenya v Eritrea as Group D fixtures.

The qualification maths is different from most groups. In nine of the twelve qualifying groups, the top two teams go through. Group D is one of three groups containing a 2027 co-host, and Kenya are already qualified. So only the highest-placed of South Africa, Guinea and Eritrea reaches the finals, wherever Kenya finish. In practice, that makes the two South Africa v Guinea matches the most important in the group, and the 2-1 home win on 26 September gives Bafana the early edge.

Correction, 26 September: An earlier version of this section said we could not confirm the group, because a fixture feed we checked labelled South Africa’s matches as Group K. CAF’s own draw and fixture announcements confirm Group D, and this section now reflects that.

Our graded record, and why these are our first international picks

Our published record across every competition is 79 wins and 55 losses from 134 graded picks, 59 percent, re-verified on the live site on 24 September 2026. Every pick is in the public log on our home page with its result attached, and the losing ones stay there.

Column	Record	Accuracy
All competitions, all time	79W-55L, 134 picks	59%
Strong picks, 70% and up	19W-3L	86%
Betway Premiership, our newest column before this one	6W-7L, 13 picks	46%
Bafana Bafana picks	1W-0L, 1 pick graded (South Africa v Guinea)	Too early to rate

That last row is part of the honest reason the Guinea pick sat at 58 percent rather than higher. The last time we opened a column in a competition we had never graded, the South African league in August 2026, we went 6 and 7 in it while running at 59 percent everywhere else. A new competition costs us accuracy for the first couple of dozen picks, every time. International football is a new competition for this site, so the Bafana column starts cautious on purpose, and you can check in a fortnight whether the caution was warranted, because the results will be posted either way. The first result is in: South Africa beat Guinea 2-1, so the Bafana column opens with a win.