India will host the 2025 women’s World Cup. Bangladesh and England, meanwhile, will host T20 World Cups in 2024 and 2026 respectively, while Sri Lanka, subject to their qualifying for the tournament, will host the inaugural Women’s Champions Trophy in 2027. The venues for the four marquee women’s global events, which are part of the next cycle of the ICC’s Future Tours Programme, were ratified by the ICC Board on Thursday in Birmingham, on the final day of the global cricket body’s annual conference.
The venues had been originally shortlisted and recommended by an ICC working group comprising the former New Zealand fast bowler Martin Snedden, who is also chairman of New Zealand Cricket, former India captain and current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, Cricket West Indies president Ricky Skerritt, and former England Women captain Clare Connor, who is also the acting ECB CEO.
For the first time, the ICC has decided to sell media rights for the women’s global events separately from the men’s events, and this was the main yardstick for the working group as well as the ICC Board to consider before they made their final choice.
It is no surprise, then, that three countries from the Indian subcontinent were allotted the global events considering the main broadcasters want the event to be played in the Indian time zone.
The 2024 T20 World Cup in Bangladesh will be the first global women’s event in the 2023-27 FTP, which, according to an ICC media release published on Tuesday, has been finalised and will be made public later this week. The tournament will feature 10 teams playing a total of 23 matches, and is scheduled to be played in the September-October period. This will be Bangladesh’s first global event in a decade, after the country hosted the 2014 men’s T20 World Cup.
India will host the Women’s ODI World Cup for the fifth time, in 2025, and its first global women’s tournament since 2016 when the T20 World Cup ran parallel to the men’s event. The 2025 edition is set to be similar to the 2022 edition, with eight teams taking part and playing a total of 31 matches.
Just like it has done with men’s cricket, the ICC has decided to increase the number of teams taking part in the T20 World Cup, with 12 teams set to play 33 matches during the 2026 edition, which will be held for the first time in England, one of the countries that has consistently championed women’s cricket. In 2017, Heather Knight’s England won the ODI World Cup, defeating India in the final in front of a sell-out crowd at Lord’s. That match was a turning point in women’s cricket as not just the ICC, but also member countries and sponsors, decided to support the sport aggressively. Former England women’s captain Clare Connor, the ECB’s acting chief executive officer, recounted the 2017 World Cup, saying it had “captured people’s imagination” on “that magical day”.
Sri Lanka were awarded the hosting rights for the inaugural edition of the Women’s Champions Trophy, which is set to be played in 2027, in the T20 format. The six-team tournament, comprising 16 matches, will be played in February 2026. The ICC, though, has said that the tournament could be moved to a different venue in case Sri Lanka fail to qualify. Sri Lanka Cricket CEO Ashley de Silva said it was an “an excellent opportunity” to further the growth of women’s cricket globally.
More to follow…
Nagraj Gollapudi is news editor at ESPNcricinfo
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