The genus Anthracocystis (Ustilaginales, Ustilaginaceae) was recently reinstated for grass-infecting species of smut fungi that have sori with a peridium composed of mostly fungal cells, filiform or slender columellae, persistent spore balls usually composed of dimorphic spores, and lacking sterile cells between spore balls. In this study, Anthracocystis grodzinskae sp. nov. on Euclasta condylotricha is described and illustrated from the Sudanian savanna biome in Benin (West Africa). The new species is compared with two other smut fungi known on Euclasta condylotricha, namely Sporisorium euclastae and Anthracocystis ischaemoides, in Zambia. It differs from these species in a number of morphological characters that are discussed in detail. The systematic position of A. grodzinskae was investigated in a phylogenetic analysis with a concatenated supermatrix of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit (LSU) regions of ribosomal DNA. The dataset included all representatives of Anthracocystis for which sequences were available in the National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI’s) GenBank and that were linked to reliably identified source specimens, related yeast species, and unnamed yeast strains or environmental sequences. The phylogenetic hypothesis derived from the dataset is intended to serve as a backbone tree for Anthracocystis. 19 ITS and 13 LSU sequences were tracked to represent sequences generated from type specimens (holotypes, isotypes or paratypes). These type sequences are recommended to be deposited in the RefSeq Targeted Loci database. This study provides the first explicit evidence that several asexual species are nested within the Anthracocystis lineage. The yeast sequences were scattered in different subclades of Anthracocystis and none of them could be directly assigned to a teleomorphic species. Only one of these yeast anamorphs was assigned to a species, namely Pseudozyma flocculosa. In line with the current code of nomenclature, and following recent practice of merging yeast species with sexual species under the older generic name, this yeast is recombined into Anthracocystis as A. flocculosa. Additionally, new combinations are proposed for four teliosporic species (Anthracocystis andrewmitchellii, A. christineae, A. kenyana, A. warambiensis).