The International Cricket Council (ICC) has unveiled a significant overhaul of the formats for both the ODI World Cup and the T20 World Cup, introducing new competition stages that organizers say will keep more teams in contention for longer and reduce the number of matches with little riding on them. The announcement followed a series of board meetings held over the weekend, and cricket followers say the scale of the changes is greater than many had anticipated.
According to the ICC, the restructuring was designed to foster more meaningful contests and elevate the overall tournament experience for both athletes and spectators. Global cricket tournaments have long grappled with the challenge of balancing inclusivity — giving more nations a chance to compete on the biggest stage — with the need to maintain competitive intensity throughout the event. The latest changes appear to be a direct response to that tension, particularly criticism in past editions that certain fixtures, especially in early group stages, carried little consequence once qualification scenarios became clear.
The next edition of the ODI World Cup, scheduled for 2027, will be co-hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. This will be a notably larger tournament than recent editions, expanding to a total of 14 teams. For the first time, the ICC has introduced a preliminary round ahead of the main group stage: the teams that finish in the 12th, 13th and 14th qualifying spots will first compete in what is being called a Super Series, with the winner of that round earning the right to join the other 11 already-qualified teams in the group stage proper.
From there, the tournament structure becomes more intricate. The group stage will be split into two groups of six teams each. The top three finishers from each group, along with the best-performing fourth-placed team across both groups, will advance to a newly created Super 7 stage. In this round, each of the seven remaining teams will play one another, with the top four ultimately progressing to the knockout stage, which will consist of two semi-finals followed by the final. The ICC has said this layered structure is intended to strengthen the competitive narrative that runs through the entire tournament, rather than allowing the outcome to be effectively decided well before the knockout rounds begin.
For fans, the practical effect of this redesign is that a far greater share of matches should carry direct stakes. Under previous formats, teams that were mathematically eliminated, or already assured of advancement, sometimes played out fixtures that had little bearing on the tournament's outcome — a recurring complaint among broadcasters, sponsors and supporters alike. By adding the Super Series qualifying round and the Super 7 stage, the ICC appears to be betting that continuous jeopardy, rather than a straightforward group-and-knockout system, will sustain interest deeper into the event.
The T20 World Cup is also being reshaped, with the 2028 edition co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand set to expand to 20 competing teams. That tournament will open with a group stage comprising 30 matches, with the teams divided into five groups of four. The top two finishers in each group will then progress to a newly established Super 10 round. Within that stage, the winner of each group will qualify directly for the semi-finals, while the two remaining semi-final berths will be decided through an entirely new eliminator round, in which the second-placed teams from the Super 10 groups will face off against third-placed teams from the opposite groups.
That eliminator mechanism, organizers suggest, is specifically designed to avoid so-called dead rubbers — matches whose results no longer affect a team's progression — and to keep pressure on participating sides for as long as possible before the knockout stage begins. Twenty-team tournaments inherently carry a higher risk of mismatches and low-stakes group games earlier in the schedule, and the layered Super 10 and eliminator system appears to be an attempt to offset that by funneling teams through additional competitive filters rather than a single elimination cutoff.
Reaction within the cricket community has been mixed, as format changes of this magnitude typically are. Some fans have welcomed the prospect of more matches, more storylines and sustained drama across both tournaments, while others have expressed concern about tournament fatigue for players and audiences, and whether adding extra rounds might ultimately dilute the quality and prestige associated with reaching the knockout stage. A further question that has not been directly addressed in the official announcements concerns logistics: whether smaller co-hosting nations such as Namibia and Zimbabwe have the stadium infrastructure, broadcast capacity and crowd support necessary to sustain a 14-team tournament built around this many high-stakes rounds. That practical dimension of the plan remains largely unaddressed for now, even as the broader format changes take shape.
- 2027 ODI World Cup will have 14 teams with a new preliminary Super Series round for the lowest three qualifiers, co-hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
- The ODI event's group stage will use two groups of six, feeding into a Super 7 round before two semi-finals and a final.
- 2028 T20 World Cup, co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, will feature 20 teams across five groups of four in a 30-match group stage.
- A new T20 eliminator round will see second-placed Super 10 teams face third-placed teams from opposite groups for the remaining semi-final spots.
