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ST. JOHN’S, Antigua & Barbuda – Cuba and French Guiana are guaranteed to square off in a third straight CFU Men’s Caribbean Cup following the 2016 edition’s draw on Saturday at Sugar Ridge Resort, which pitted them against each other in Group 3.

The meeting promises to be one of the featured first-round encounters, which will be contested between 21 teams in seven evenly-split groups from March 21-29, 2016. The Cubans defeated French Guiana (2-1) en route to the 2012 title — their first-ever in the competition – and drew with the South American side (2-1) two years later.

Each of the four Caribbean squads still involved in CONCACAF qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup – Haiti, defending champion Jamaica, St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Trinidad & Tobago – will kick-off their campaigns in the second round.

The Caribbean Cup is a biennial competition that crowns the region’s champion and qualifies at least four teams to the CONCACAF Gold Cup. In 2015, for the first-ever time, the Caribbean’s quartet of representatives – Cuba, Haiti Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago — advanced past the Gold Cup’s group stage.

2016 CFU MEN’S CARIBBEAN CUP DRAW

First Round

Group 1: Antigua & Barbuda, St Kitts & Nevis, Aruba

Group 2: Grenada, St. Maarten, U.S. Virgin Islands

Group 3: Cuba, Bermuda, French Guiana

Group 4: Barbados, Curacao, Dominican Republic

Group 5: Guyana, Puerto Rico, Anguilla

Group 6: Guadeloupe, St. Martin, Suriname

Group 7: Martinique, British Virgin Islands, Dominica

Byes: Haiti, Jamaica, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago

Dates by Round

Round 1: March 21-29, 2016

Round 2: May 15-21, 2016

Round 3: October 3-11, 2016

Fifth Place Playoff: November 7-15, 2016

Final Round: May 2017