Women's T20 World Cup 2026

Background

The ICC Women's T20 World Cup is a biennial world cup for women's cricket in Women's Twenty20 International (WT20I) format, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was first played in 2009 in England, and the 2026 tournament marked its tenth edition. The ninth edition, held in 2024 in the United Arab Emirates, was contested by 10 teams, and was won by New Zealand, who defeated South Africa in the final.

Host selection

In July 2022, as part of the 2024–2027 ICC women's hosts cycle, the ICC announced that the 2026 Women's T20 World Cup would be played in England. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had previously hosted the inaugural competition in 2009.

Format

The 12 qualifying teams are divided into two groups of six teams each. In the group stage, each team will play every other team in its group once in a round-robin format. The top two teams from each group will advance to the knockout stage, which will consist of two semi-finals, with the winners facing off in the final.

Schedule

In the 2025–2029 ICC Women's Future Tours Programme, the tournament was scheduled to be held in June–July 2026. The ICC announced the tournament schedule on 24 February 2026, with the tournament scheduled to take place from 12 June to 5 July 2026. The teams will play 33 matches across seven venues in England. On 10 July 2025, the ICC announced that warm-up matches would be played at two venues in England and one in Wales. Full list of warm-up fixtures were revealed on 13 May 2026.

Prize money

The ICC allocated a pool of $8.76 million in prize money for the tournament, a 10% increase from 2024. The winners would be given at least $2.34 million, with each team receiving an additional $31,154 for each match they won, excluding the semi-finals and final. Unlike the previous editions, instead of positional prizes for teams that failed to advance to the knockout stage, a minimum participation fee is given to all the teams.

Marketing

On 27 May 2026, the ICC announced that the opening ceremony for the tournament would be held on 12 June ahead of the opening match at Edgbaston Cricket Ground in Birmingham. The ceremony featured Emma Kingston and Zizi Strallen who portrayed Elphaba and Glinda along with the full cast from the British production of the musical Wicked performing in a lively erected set marking the 20th anniversary of the musical's British iteration. A promotional event "Captains' Carnival", featuring all the team captains was held on 7 June at the Waterloo Bridge in London. On 2 July, the ICC announced that a closing ceremony would be held on 5 July ahead of the final match at Lord's in London with performances from Rita Ora and Clean Bandit.

Qualification

The host team England, along with the top five teams from the 2024 tournament: Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the West Indies; directly qualified for the 2026 tournament. The remaining two direct qualification places were allocated to the next best-ranked teams in the ICC Women's T20I Team Rankings as on 20 October 2024, that had not finished in the top six: Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The four remaining places were filled through the global qualifier in February 2026: Bangladesh, Ireland, Netherlands and Scotland. Netherlands qualified for the women's T20 World Cup for the first time.

Venues

In May 2025, the ECB confirmed the seven venues for the World Cup: Edgbaston Cricket Ground in Birmingham, County Ground in Bristol, Headingley Cricket Ground in Leeds, Lord's and The Oval in London, Old Trafford Cricket Ground in Manchester and Rose Bowl in Southampton.

Squads

Each team was allowed a maximum squad size of 15 players and were required to submit the provisional squad to the ICC by 1 May 2026. The teams were allowed to make changes to the squads until 1 June 2026. Any changes after this required permission from the ICC's event technical committee.

Match officials

On 28 May 2026, the ICC released the list of match referees and umpires for the tournament. On 21 June 2026, Lauren Agenbag was ruled out of the tournament due to illness and was replaced by Saleema Imtiaz. Trudy Anderson , Shandre Fritz , G. S. Lakshmi , Michell Pereira Lauren Agenbag , Kim Cotton , Anna Harris , Saleema Imtiaz , Shathira Jakir , Narayanan Janani , Kerrin Klaaste , Candace la Borde , Nimali Perera , Claire Polosak , Vrinda Rathi , Sue Redfern , Eloise Sheridan , Jacqueline Williams , Gayathri Venugopalan

Warm-up matches

A total of 12 warm-up matches were played from 6 to 10 June, involving all 12 teams participating in the World Cup across two venues in England: County Cricket Ground in Derby and Haslegrave Ground in Loughborough and one venue in Wales at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff.

Group stage

The ICC announced the groups and fixtures on 24 February 2026, with group stage played from 12 to 28 June. The 12 teams were divided into two groups of six with each team facing the other teams in the group once. The group stage featured a total of 30 matches. The opening match was played between England and Sri Lanka at Edgbaston on 12 June.

Group A

Australia won the toss and elected to bat. Netherlands won the toss and elected to bat. India won the toss and elected to bat. Australia won the toss and elected to field. Netherlands won the toss and elected to field. Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat. Netherlands won the toss and elected to field. , Babette de Leede (Ned) played in her 100th T20I. Bangladesh won the toss and elected to bat. , Pakistan were eliminated as a result of this match. India won the toss and elected to bat. , Harmanpreet Kaur (Ind) played in her 200th T20I. , Prema Rawat (Ind) made her T20I debut. Australia won the toss and elected to bat. , Australia qualified for their tenth consecutive T20 World Cup semi-final as a result of this match. Bangladesh won the toss and elected to bat. Netherlands won the toss and elected to field. , Tazmin Brits (SA) scored her maiden century in T20Is. She also scored her 2,000th run in T20Is. Pakistan won the toss and elected to bat. , Netherlands were eliminated as a result of this match. Bangladesh won the toss and elected to bat. , Marizanne Kapp (SA) took her 100th wicket in T20Is. , Bangladesh were eliminated as a result of this match. India won the toss and elected to bat. , Deepti Sharma (Ind) surpassed Jhulan Goswami to become the highest wicket-taker in international women's cricket. , This was the highest successful run chase in the T20 World Cup. , South Africa qualified for their fourth consecutive and overall fifth T20 World Cup semi-final while India were eliminated as a result of this match.

Group B

Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to field. , England's 219 was the highest innings total in the T20 World Cup. Ireland won the toss and elected to field. , Scotland recorded their first win in the T20 World Cup. West Indies won the toss and elected to field. New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat. England won the toss and elected to field. Scotland won the toss and elected to field. Ireland won the toss and elected to field. Scotland won the toss and elected to field. West Indies won the toss and elected to field. New Zealand won the toss and elected to field. Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to field. , Ireland were eliminated as a result of this match. West Indies won the toss and elected to field. , England qualified for their eighth T20 World Cup semi-final as a result of this match. Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to field. , Scotland were eliminated as a result of this match. Ireland won the toss and elected to field. , Ireland recorded their first win in the T20 World Cup. , Sri Lanka were eliminated as a result of this match. New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat. , Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine, and Lea Tahuhu (NZ) all played in their last T20I. , West Indies qualified for their second consecutive and overall seventh T20 World Cup semi-final while New Zealand were eliminated as a result of this match.

Knockout stage

The knockout stage consisted of two semi-finals played on 30 June and 2 July, and the final on 5 July. The semi-finals were played at The Oval with the final at Lord's. The group A winner and group B runner-up played in the first semi-final and group B winner and Group A runner-up in the second. If India had qualifed, they would have played in the first semi-final. Both semi-finals and the final had a reserve day available on 1, 3, and 6 July respectively. If a reserve day came into play, the match would not have been restarted but instead resumed from the previous day's play, if there was any; with the play commencing at 14:30 (UTC+01). In the event of no minimum play (at least 10 overs per side) on the scheduled day and the reserve day, in the semi-finals, the team that finished higher in the group stage would have progressed to the final, and in the final, the teams would have been declared as joint-winners.

Semi-finals

Australia won the toss and elected to field. , Australia became the first team to qualify for eight T20 World Cup finals. South Africa won the toss and elected to field. , England qualified for their fifth T20 World Cup final.

Statistics

Danni Wyatt-Hodge of England scored the most runs in the 2026 tournament (302 runs from 7 innings). She also became the first player to score over 300 runs in a single edition of the T20 World Cup, while scoring the most runs in a single T20 World Cup. A total of three centuries were scored in the 2026 tournament surpassing the previous high of two in a single edition of T20 World Cup (2020). The 2026 tournament also had twelve 100-run partnerships surpassing the previous high of six in a single edition of T20 World Cup (2023). Shree Charani of India took the most wickets in the 2026 tournament (14 wickets from 5 innings). Shabnim Ismail of South Africa became the first player to take 50+ overall wickets in the T20 World Cup.

Team of the tournament

On 6 July, the ICC announced its team of the tournament with Beth Mooney being named as player of the tournament and Sophie Molineux as the captain of the team.

Broadcasting

The global broadcasters for the tournament were confirmed by the ICC on 6 June 2026. The matches were broadcast worldwide in 14 languages. The matches were also broadcast through ICC.tv and the ICC's official YouTube channel. JioHotstar provided a vertical live feed along with multi-camera features.

Commentators

The ICC released the following list of commentators for the tournament on 8 June 2026. Ian Bishop , Carlos Brathwaite , Anjum Chopra , Charles Dagnall , Simon Doull , Tash Farrant , Natalie Germanos , Isa Guha , Matthew Hayden , Nasser Hussain , Mel Jones , Isobel Joyce , Raunak Kapoor , Dinesh Karthik , Stacy-Ann King , Veda Krishnamurthy , Katey Martin , Laura McGoldrick , Sana Mir , Alison Mitchell , Kass Naidoo , Julia Price , Ebony Rainford-Brent , Mithali Raj , Jatin Sapru , Ian Smith , Alan Wilkins

Attendance & viewership

The six-match/three-day opening weekend had a total attendance of 44,844 surpassing the previous high of 34,680 for the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup's opening weekend in India. The weekend also reported a 134 million digital viewers on JioHotstar platform in India. It became the most watched ICC women's tournament opening in UK's Sky network with a peak of 510,000 concurrent viewers. The ICC's social contents reached over 753 million views in the opening weekend as well. The match 6 between India and Pakistan was attended by 18,814 fans surpassing their 2024 encounter's attendance of 15,935 to become the most-attended group satge match; The record would be surpassed twice again in the tournament: match 28 attended by 21,018 and mathces 29 and 30 attended by 27,164. The final match grossed over £1 million (US$1.37 million) in ticket sales alone and was attended by 28,000 fans. The final match also had a peak of 678,000 concurrent viewers in the Sky network and 2.1 million views of the BBC's coverage. The tournament had a total attendance of 245,815 across 25 match days, more than three times of that of 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup in England. The tournament also became the most watched Women's T20 World Cup with the watchtime of 15 million hours on the Sky network.