.png)
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has referred a dispute over the validity of the Senegalese Football Federation’s (FSF) 2025 presidential election back to the federation’s Electoral Appeals Committee for further investigation and a new decision.
The ruling, announced on August 21, means the FSF committee must reconsider an appeal brought by former presidential candidate Mady Touré, whose original challenge was declared inadmissible shortly after the election.
The CAS decision does not overturn the election of Aboulaye Fall as FSF president and does not currently affect the results of the August 2025 vote.
The election took place during an Elective General Assembly held on August 2 and 3, 2025, with the FSF president and 16 committee members chosen. Touré participated in the proceedings until around 2am on August 3, before informing the chair of the FSF Electoral Committee that he was withdrawing from the second round and leaving the assembly.
Fall was subsequently elected to a four-year term.
Touré later appealed to the FSF Electoral Appeals Committee, calling for the electoral process to be annulled and new elections to be held. He claimed he had withdrawn after identifying alleged irregularities in the proceedings, including concerns over transparency in the verification and counting of votes.
The FSF Electoral Appeals Committee rejected the appeal as inadmissible on August 25, 2025.
Touré then took the case to CAS on September 11, 2025, naming the FSF, Fall and three other presidential candidates as respondents. He sought to have the committee's decision overturned, the presidential election annulled and a new Elective General Assembly convened.
Following a remote hearing on March 10, 2026, the CAS panel examined the FSF's electoral regulations and concluded that the decision to declare Touré's appeal inadmissible was not legally justified.
According to CAS, the appeal should instead have been examined on its merits, with the FSF Electoral Appeals Committee required to provide a reasoned decision.
However, CAS said it did not have enough evidence to rule on Touré's wider request to annul the presidential election because the necessary investigative measures had not been carried out by the FSF committee.
As a result, the case has been sent back to the Electoral Appeals Committee for further investigation and a new ruling on the merits.
The referral does not itself invalidate Fall's election, meaning he remains FSF president while the domestic appeals process is reconsidered.
CAS said its decision was based on the need for the FSF's electoral authorities to properly examine the allegations before any determination could be made on whether the election itself should be annulled.
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash / Victor Rutka
