ICC approves sweeping World Cup format changes for ODI and T20 events
Author: Vishnu Reddy
Updated At:
The International Cricket Council has approved major changes to the men’s ODI and T20 World Cup formats after decisions taken at the ICC Board’s annual meetings in Edinburgh. The revisions add new stages, change the qualification path for 2028 and keep both tournaments at their current overall team counts.
The Men’s Cricket World Cup will remain a 14-team competition, but it will now be played across three rounds before the semifinals and final. The first stage will be a new Super Series involving the teams ranked 12th, 13th and 14th in qualification, with only the winner advancing. That team will then join the remaining 11 nations in a second phase made up of two groups of six, with 30 matches played there.
From that point, the top three teams in each group, along with the next highest-placed side across both groups, will move into the Super 7.
The seven qualified teams will play a single round-robin stage of 21 matches, and the top four will go on to the semifinals, with first facing fourth and second meeting third. The revised tournament will contain 57 matches in all.
Under the previous format, the 14 teams were split into two groups of seven, with the top three from each group advancing to a Super Six stage before the semifinals and final.
The ICC said the changes were meant to create more meaningful contests and increase the consequences of matches throughout the tournament.
The Men’s T20 World Cup will also keep its 20-team structure, but the format will change significantly. Instead of four groups of five, the opening phase will now have five groups of four, reducing the number of group-stage matches from 40 to 30. The top two teams from each group will advance to the new Super 10 stage.
Those 10 teams will then be split into two groups of five. Each group winner will go straight to the semifinals, while teams finishing second in each group will play the third-placed team from the opposite group in two eliminators.
The winners of those matches will complete the semifinal line-up. The previous format used a Super Eights stage with two groups of four, and the top two from each group went directly to the semifinals.
ICC Confirms New Qualification Structure for the 2028 T20 World Cup
The ICC also confirmed the qualification structure for the 2028 Men’s T20 World Cup. Scotland has been granted direct entry into the Europe Regional Final because of the exceptional circumstances surrounding its participation in the 2026 tournament. All other teams that played in 2026 but did not qualify automatically for 2028 will go straight into the Global Qualifier.
Eight more places in that qualifier will come through regional tournaments: two each from Africa, Asia and Europe, and one each from the Americas and East Asia-Pacific.
From there, the highest-placed team from each region, plus the next three best teams overall, will qualify for the 2028 tournament, subject to the ICC’s minimum performance criteria.
The Board also endorsed a proposed 16-team global men’s tournament for associate member nations. It is intended to give associate sides more regular high-quality competition, but it has not yet been given final approval. The proposal will be reviewed by the ICC’s Finance and Commercial Affairs Committee before returning to the Board for final consideration at its November meetings.
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