Top T20 World Cup 2026 News

The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 brings the tournament back to the subcontinent a decade after India last hosted it in 2016 and Sri Lanka in 2012. Co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka, it will run from 7 February to 8 March 2026, featuring 20 teams and 55 matches.

India arrive as defending champions, having won the 2024 edition in the West Indies and the USA by defeating South Africa in the final, and will open their title defence against the USA at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on the opening night.

Format, qualification and groups

The format is unchanged from 2024. The 20 teams are split into four groups of five, with each side playing the other four teams in its group once. The top two from each group progress to the Super Eight, where they are placed into two groups of four and play three further games each. From there, the top two in each Super Eight group move into the knockouts, comprising two semifinals and the final.

The automatic qualifiers are: co-hosts India and Sri Lanka, the top seven teams from the 2024 T20 World Cup, and the three highest-ranked T20I sides (as of 30 June 2024) not already qualified. The remaining eight slots were filled via the ICC regional pathway - two each from Africa and Europe, three from a combined Asia-East Asia Pacific final and one from the Americas. This route produced Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Oman and the UAE, with Italy qualifying for a men’s T20 World Cup for the first time.

The ICC has also pre-seeded eight teams (Australia, India, South Africa, West Indies, England, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) for Super Eight positions based on T20I rankings. If a seeded team fails to escape its group, any unseeded qualifier takes that pre-assigned slot, preserving a balanced second stage.

Groups for 2026 are:

• Group A: India, Pakistan, USA, Namibia, Netherlands
• Group B: Australia, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Oman
• Group C: England, West Indies, Bangladesh, Italy, Nepal
• Group D: South Africa, New Zealand, Afghanistan, Canada, UAE

Venues, schedule, and key storylines

The tournament will be staged across eight venues - five in India and three in Sri Lanka. In India, matches are allocated to Narendra Modi Stadium (Ahmedabad), Eden Gardens (Kolkata), Wankhede Stadium (Mumbai), MA Chidambaram Stadium (Chennai) and Arun Jaitley Stadium (Delhi). Sri Lanka’s games will be hosted at R. Premadasa Stadium and SSC Cricket Ground in Colombo and Pallekele International Cricket Stadium in Kandy.

A total of 40 group matches will be played between 7 and 20 February, followed by Super Eights from 21 February to 1 March and the semifinals on 4 and 5 March. The final is scheduled for 8 March, officially at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, with contingency to move semi-finals and final to Colombo if Pakistan qualify, in line with the neutral-venue agreement governing India-Pakistan fixtures in this event's cycle.

One of the early marquee fixtures is India vs Pakistan on 15 February in Colombo, reflecting that policy and ensuring the biggest rivalry in men’s cricket remains central to the group stage narrative.

Beyond the format and fixture, the tournament also comes with an enhanced prize pool. The champions are set to earn $3 million, up from $2.45 million in 2024, with increased payments across all finishing positions and participation fees - pushing the total purse to $13.5 million.

With six different winners across the first nine editions and the event returning to one of cricket’s most passionate markets, the 2026 T20 World Cup is positioned as both a celebration of the format’s global reach and a key commercial and competitive pillar of ICC’s 2024-2031 events cycle.

...read more