The ICC approved new formats for the 2027 ODI World Cup and the 2028 T20 World Cup at its Annual General Meeting in Edinburgh on July 15, changing both tournaments through decisions that share one common driver: guarantee more India and Pakistan matches at the sport’s two biggest events.
Both tournaments keep their existing team counts. The ODI World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia remains a 14-team event. The T20 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand remains a 20-team event. What changes is how those teams compete once they get there.
The 2027 ODI World Cup begins with a stage called the Super Series, played between the three lowest-ranked of the 14 qualified nations. Those three teams play each other in a round-robin and the team that finishes top advances to join the other 11 in the main group stage.
Round 2 splits those 12 teams into two groups of six. Each team plays the other five in its group across 30 total matches. The top three from each group, plus the best fourth-placed team across both groups, advance to the Super 7.
The Super 7 is a single round-robin of seven teams, producing 21 matches. The top four qualify for the semi-finals, with first playing fourth and second playing third.
Before the Edinburgh meeting, earlier format proposals had included cutting the 14-team field to 12. The ICC settled on a different path, keeping 14 teams but routing the three lowest-ranked sides through the Super Series before they can reach the main event. That compromise kept associate numbers intact on paper while reducing their access to main-stage cricket in practice.
The commercial logic behind the restructure sits in the Super 7. India and Pakistan do not play each other outside ICC events. If both sides qualify for the 2027 Super 7, which the format is designed to ensure, they meet for a guaranteed second time at the tournament. They are also likely to be drawn into the same group in Round 2, producing a first meeting there. If both finish in the top four of the Super 7, a semi-final between them becomes possible. The format creates the conditions for up to three India-Pakistan matches in a single 50-over World Cup for the first time.
The Super Series drew an immediate response from the players it directly affects. Netherlands opener Max O’Dowd put the associate nation’s qualification journey into a single sentence on X.
“So you’re telling me, associate sides have to play in a 3 year 50 over tournament, to qualify for a qualifier to qualify for another tri-series qualifier to then qualify for a World Cup.”
Maxwell O’Dowd, Netherlands, X/Twitter, July 15, 2026
So you’re telling me, associate sides have to play in a 3 year 50 over tournament, to qualify for a qualifier to qualify for another tri-series qualifier to then qualify for a World Cup. https://t.co/DzdlqS0tZG
— Maxwell O’Dowd (@Maxiboi23) July 15, 2026
O’Dowd posted from his verified X account on July 15. No ICC response to the associate nations’ criticism has been issued at time of publication.
Netherlands captain Scott Edwards followed with a formal statement through the World Cricketers Association two days later.
“Qualifying for an ODI World Cup is a huge achievement for any country, so when the reality of that opportunity changes after years of planning, it’s incredibly disappointing. The ICC talks a lot about growing the game globally but decisions like this make it harder for associate nations to play against the best teams in the world. Those opportunities are what helps countries improve and inspires the next generation of players. If we’re serious about making cricket a global sport, we should be creating more opportunities on the global stage not less.”
Scott Edwards, Netherlands captain, World Cricketers Association statement, July 17, 2026
Scotland captain Richie Berrington raised a separate concern: that players were not meaningfully consulted before decisions of this scale were made. Namibia captain Gerhard Erasmus, Ireland opener Paul Stirling and USA allrounder Harmeet Singh also added their responses through the WCA on July 17.
Insider Read:
The Super Series is the most damaging thing the ICC has done to associate cricket in years, and it has nothing to do with exclusion on paper. These teams qualified. They earned the right to be at the World Cup. But the Super Series places three of the 14 qualified nations in a pre-round while the other eleven walk directly into the main event. In an associate dressing room, that distinction is felt from the moment the format is announced. Players who spent three years grinding through qualification cycles understand exactly what being assigned to the pre-round says about where their country stands in the game. The ICC called it enhanced consequence. The players who have to play it call it something else.
The Super 7 tells a different story. Seven teams in a single round-robin, 21 matches, every one carrying real stakes. There are no dead rubbers. A straight knockout quarter-final can eliminate a team on a single bad day against a side it outplayed across the group stage. The Super 7 cannot produce that. The best seven teams play multiple matches against each other and the table at the end tells the honest story of who deserves a semi-final spot. It is the most accurate penultimate format cricket has produced.
The T20 WC Eliminators complete the picture. The concept, where second-placed Super 10 teams play third-placed teams from the opposite group for a semi-final spot, is the exact format used in IPL, MLC and SA20. The ICC spent years arguing that franchise cricket’s expansion threatened the health of the international calendar. The 2028 T20 World Cup format is the ICC acknowledging, without stating it in those terms, that franchise cricket understood how to create maximum drama under knockout pressure, and international cricket is now using the same mechanism.
The 2028 T20 World Cup keeps its 20 teams but changes the structure at every stage. The group round moves from four groups of five to five groups of four, cutting the total group-stage match count from 40 to 30. The top two from each group advance to the Super 10, which replaces the Super Eights and expands the second-stage field from eight to ten teams.
The Super 10 splits those ten teams into two groups of five for a round-robin stage. The group winner from each Super 10 group qualifies directly for the semi-finals. The remaining two semi-final spots are decided by the Eliminators, where the second-placed team from each Super 10 group faces the third-placed team from the opposite group.
Twelve teams have already secured automatic qualification for the 2028 T20 World Cup based on performance at the 2026 edition, which India won for a third T20 World Cup title: Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Zimbabwe. The remaining eight spots will be filled through a 16-team Global Qualifier, subject to final approval by the ICC Finance and Commercial Affairs committee in November. Scotland received direct entry to the Europe Regional Final rather than the Global Qualifier due to exceptional circumstances surrounding their 2026 participation.
Sources:
- ICC Board Annual General Meeting, Edinburgh, July 15, 2026 ICC Media Release
- Maxwell O’Dowd, Netherlands, X/Twitter, July 15, 2026 X/Twitter
- Scott Edwards, Gerhard Erasmus, Paul Stirling, Richie Berrington, Harmeet Singh, World Cricketers Association statement, July 17, 2026 IANS
