NAIROBI, Kenya, May 17, 2026 – The national football team, Harambee Stars, will play Kyrgyzstan and Palestine in an international friendly.
In a statement, the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) announced that Benni McCarthy’s charges will play Kyrgyzstan on June 3 in Bishkek before duelling with the Palestines at the same venue, three days later.
It will be the team’s second international friendly this year after a fruitful outing at the Fifa Global Series in Kigali in March.
On that occasion, Stars bagged bronze in the four-team tourney after beating Grenada 3-0 in the third-place playoff.
A few days earlier, they had narrowly lost to Estonia via post match penalties.
Most importantly, the latest round of friendlies provide McCarthy with an opportunity to assess and rejig his team in readiness for next year’s Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon), which Kenya will co-host with Uganda and Tanzania.
The South African has been on a worldwide trip to scout and convince a number of foreign-born players to sign up for his project to transform Kenya into a formidable side.
In view of the upcoming friendlies, a number of new faces may well grace the national team as McCarthy employs a method that has been tried by his peers in Morocco, Algeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to varied degrees of success.
