ICC T20 World Cup 2024 Format: Explained

The ODI World Cup 2023 has recently concluded. However, another ICC tournament is planned for the following year in the form of the 2024 ICC T20 World Cup, which will take place in June 2024.

The 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup will be the ninth edition of the T20 World Cup, a biennial Twenty20 International (T20I) competition contested by men’s national teams and managed by the International Cricket Council (ICC).

The West Indies and the United States will host it from June 4 to June 30, 2024. It will be the first time an ICC World Cup competition has been held in the United States.

The tournament will feature 20 teams, an increase from the previous edition’s 16 teams. England is the reigning champion, having won the trophy in the 2022 edition.

Aside from the 2 hosts, the top 8 teams from the previous tournament qualified automatically. The following 2 teams qualified based on the ICC Men’s T20I Team Rankings, and the remaining 8 teams were chosen through a regional qualification process. Canada, Uganda, and the United States have qualified for the T20 World Cup for the first time.

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What is the Format of the T20 World Cup 2024?

The 20 qualifying teams will be split into 4 groups of 5, with the top 2 teams from each group advancing to the Super 8 phase. In this phase, the qualifying teams will be split into 2 groups of 4, with the top 2 teams from each group moving on to the knockout phase, which consists of 2 semifinals and a championship match.

Group Stage

The group stage will consist of 4 groups of 5 teams. Each team will play against others in a single round-robin format, with the top 4 teams from each group advancing to the Super 8 round.

Super 8s

Following the group stage, the top 2 teams from each group will be split into 2 groups of 4 for the Super 8 stage, which will be played as a single round-robin, with the top 2 teams from each group advancing to the knockout stage.

Teams and Qualifications

The top 8 teams from the 2022 tournament, as well as the 2 hosts, automatically qualified for the event. The next best-ranked teams in the ICC Men’s T20I Team Rankings who had not already clinched a spot as of November 14, 2022, filled the remaining 2 automatic qualification spots.

The teams that qualified automatically are as follows: the West Indies (hosts), the USA (hosts), England, Australia, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

The remaining 8 spots were filled through the ICC’s regional qualifications, which included 2 teams each from Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as 1 team from each of the Americas and East Asia-Pacific groupings.

In July 2023, Papua New Guinea from the East Asia-Pacific Qualifier qualified first before Ireland and Scotland from the Europe Qualifier. Canada qualified in October 2023 by defeating Bermuda in the final match of the Americas Qualifier.

Nepal and Oman qualified the following month after reaching the final of the Asia Qualifier. Namibia and Uganda were the final 2 teams to qualify for the tournament’s final stages after finishing first and second in the Africa Qualifier.