2022 FIFA World Cup qualification – AFC second round

The AFC second round of 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification, which also served as the second round of 2023 AFC Asian Cup qualification, was played from 5 September 2019 to 15 June 2021.

Format
A total of forty teams were drawn into eight groups of five to play home-and-away round-robin matches. They included the 34 teams (teams ranked 1–34 in the AFC entrant list) which received byes to this round, and the six winners from the first round.

Seven group winners (excluding Qatar, who had already qualified to the World Cup as tournament hosts) and the five best runners-up advanced to the third round.

Matches in this round were also part of the 2023 AFC Asian Cup qualifying campaign. The twelve teams which advanced to the third round of the FIFA World Cup qualification and Qatar, as group winners, automatically qualified for the 2023 AFC Asian Cup. Twenty-four teams (22 of which advanced directly and two which advanced from an additional play-off round) played in the third round of the AFC Asian Cup qualification to decide the remaining eleven teams. In total, the 2023 AFC Asian Cup featured 24 teams.

Seeding
The draw for the second round was held on 17 July 2019 at 17:00 MST (UTC+8), at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The seeding was based on the FIFA World Rankings of June 2019 (shown in parentheses below).

Note: Bolded teams qualified for the Third round.

† First round winners W Withdrew after five matches

Schedule
The schedule of each matchday was as follows.

On 5 March 2020, FIFA announced that it would be monitoring the health situation in the region for possible rescheduling of matchdays 7 through 10 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Later on 9 March, FIFA and AFC jointly announced that the matches on matchdays 7–10 due to take place in March and June 2020 were postponed, with the new dates to be confirmed. However, subject to approval by FIFA and AFC, and agreement of both member associations, the matches may be played as scheduled provided that all individuals' safety meets the required standards. On 5 June, AFC confirmed that matchdays 7 and 8 were scheduled to take place on 8 and 13 October respectively while matchdays 9 and 10 were scheduled to kick off on 12 and 17 November. On 12 August, FIFA announced that the matches scheduled for October and November 2020 would be rescheduled to 2021.

On 11 November 2020, the AFC Competitions Committee agreed at its third meeting that all second-round matches should be completed by 15 June 2021 with matchdays 7 and 8 in March and 9 and 10 in June. On the same day, however, FIFA, along with the Bangladeshi and Qatari associations, approved the only second-round match originally scheduled for 2020, Qatar versus Bangladesh, which was played on 4 December.

On 19 February 2021, FIFA and AFC postponed most of the upcoming matches to June.

Note: The group spots of Qatar and Bangladesh were swapped due to Qatar's planned participation in the 2020 Copa América, which was later deferred (becoming the 2021 Copa América). Qatar eventually withdrew.

Centralised venues
On 12 March 2021, AFC confirmed the hosts for the group stage scheduled to take place from 31 May to 15 June.
 * Group A: United Arab Emirates (China hosted Guam on 28 May.)
 * Group B: Kuwait
 * Group C: Bahrain
 * Group D: Saudi Arabia
 * Group E: Qatar
 * Group F: Japan
 * Group G: United Arab Emirates
 * Group H: South Korea

In general, these hosts were the seeded (Pot 1) teams from each group. The exceptions were Group A (where United Arab Emirates took over hosting duties after China could not host due to COVID-19 restrictions), Group B (where Pot 4 team Kuwait hosted rather than Australia), and Group C (where Pot 3 team Bahrain hosted rather than Iran).

Group A
Goalscorers

Group B
Goalscorers

Group C
Goalscorers

Group D
Goalscorers

Group E
The group spots of Qatar and Bangladesh were swapped due to Qatar's planned participation in the 2020 Copa América. The tournament was later deferred (becoming the 2021 Copa América), and eventually Qatar withdrew from it.

Goalscorers

Group F
Goalscorers

Group G
Goalscorers

Group H
Goalscorers

Ranking of runner-up teams
Group H contained only four teams compared to five teams in all other groups after North Korea withdrew. Therefore, the results against the fifth-placed team were not counted when determining the ranking of the runner-up teams.