Of the 47 AFC member associations, a total of 29 teams entered the competition. The 16 spots in the final tournament are distributed as follows:
Host : [|1] spot
ASEAN Zone : 4 spots
South & Central Zone : 4 spots
West Zone : 4 spots
East Zone : 3 spots
As the final tournament hosts had not been announced at the time of the qualifying draw, the hosts Chinese Taipei were also included in the draw. Despite having automatically qualified for the final tournament, they may still decide to participate in qualification, and if they finish in one of the qualification spots, the next best team in their zone advances to play-off.
Not vying for qualification but will still play matches.
Teams in bold qualified for the final tournament.
AFC Draw
The draw was held on 6 July 2017, 15:00 MYT, at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, except for the ASEAN Zone which uses the 2017 AFF Futsal Championship as their qualification tournament and whose draw had already been held. The mechanism for each zone is as follows:
East Zone : seven teams from East Asia, were drawn into one group of four teams and one group of three teams.
South & Central Zone : seven teams from South Asia and Central Asia, were drawn into one group of four teams and one group of three teams.
West Zone : eight teams from West Asia, were drawn into two groups of four teams.
The teams were seeded according to their performance in the 2016 AFC Futsal Championship final tournament and qualification.
Pot 1
Pot 2
Pot 3
Pot 4
Host:
Host:
Host:
;Notes
Teams in bold qualified for the final tournament.
ASEAN Zone
East Zone
South & Central Zone
West Zone
Format
In each group, teams play each other once at a centralised venue; except ASEAN Zone, South & Central Zone.
Tiebreakers
Teams are ranked according to points, and if tied on points, the following tiebreaking criteria are applied, in the order given, to determine the rankings :
Points in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goal difference in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among tied teams;
If more than two teams are tied, and after applying all head-to-head criteria above, a subset of teams are still tied, all head-to-head criteria above are reapplied exclusively to this subset of teams;
Goal difference in all group matches;
Goals scored in all group matches;
Penalty shoot-out if only two teams are tied and they met in the last round of the group;
In the event the Philippines, Timor Leste or both finish among the top two teams in their group the next best team/s qualify for the final tournament instead since both countries did not submit their entries for the 2018 AFC Futsal Championship.
Group A
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Group B
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Semi-finals
Third place match
Final
East Zone
The matches are played between 4 and 8 November 2017.
All matches are held in Thailand.
Times listed are.
Group A
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Group B
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Play-off
Winner qualifies for 2018 AFC Futsal Championship.
South & Central Zone
The matches are played between 15 and 17 October 2017.
