WI Open 2026 Women’s T20 World Cup Against New Zealand

The West Inides will face defending champions New Zealand in their opening game of the 2026 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, scheduled from June 12 to July 5 in England.

The game scheduled for June 13 in Southampton, is a rematch of their semi-final showdown at the last edition of the tournament.

The West Indies, who are in group two, will have other group games against host England on June 24 at Lord’s and Sri Lanka June 21 in Bristol. They’ll also have games against two more qualifiers who’ll be decided later this year.

Australia, South Africa, India, Pakistan and two qualifiers will play in Group 1. The semi-finals will be played at The Oval, while the final is scheduled at Lord’s.

The 33-match tournament will take place across seven venues in England over 24 days. The tournament will have 12 teams, up from 10 in the previous edition in 2023.

Apart from The Oval and Lord’s, matches will also be held at Old Trafford, Headingley, Southampton, Bristol and Edgbaston and will have three different start times: 10:30 am, 2:30 pm and 6:30 pm local.

The opening match will be played between England and Sri Lanka at Edgbaston on June 12.

The top two teams from each group will make the semi-finals to be held on June 30 and July 2. The winners will meet for the title clash at Lord’s on July 5.

Hosts England and the top five teams from the 2024 edition (Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa and West Indies) qualified automatically for the edition. Pakistan and Sri Lanka, who were the two next highest-ranked teams on the ICC Women’s T20I rankings table on October 21 that year, made the cut too.

The remaining four teams will come from the global qualifiers scheduled for early 2026. Bangladesh, Scotland, USA, Nepal and Thailand have already qualified for that ten-team competition. The Europe, Africa and East Asia-Pacific qualifiers are yet to be completed.