The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Wednesday confirmed that the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2024 will be moved from Bangladesh to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The event, scheduled to take place from 3 to 20 October, will now be staged in Dubai and Sharjah.
“It is a shame not to be hosting the Women’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh as we know the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) would have staged a memorable event,” ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said in a statement.
“I would like to thank the team at the BCB for exploring all avenues to try and enable the event to be hosted in Bangladesh, but travel advisories from the governments of a number of the participating teams meant that wasn’t feasible. However, they will retain hosting rights. We look forward to taking an ICC global event to Bangladesh in the near future.
“I’d also like to thank the Emirates Cricket Board for stepping in to host on behalf of the BCB and Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe for their generous offers of support, and we look forward to seeing ICC global events in both of those countries in 2026.”
Meanwhile, ICC Chair Greg Barclay confirmed to the Board that he will not stand for a third term and will step down from the post when his current tenure finishes at the end of November. Barclay was appointed as the Independent ICC Chair in November 2020, before being re-elected in 2022.
The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup (formerly the ICC Women’s World Twenty20) is the biennial international championship for women’s Twenty20 International cricket. The event is organised by the sport’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), with the first edition having been held in England in 2009. For the first three tournaments, there were eight participants, but this number has been raised to ten from the 2014 edition onwards. In July 2022, the ICC announced that the Bangladesh would host the 2024 tournament and that England would host the 2026 tournament. The number of teams in at the 2026 tournament is also set to increase to twelve.
At each tournament, a set number of teams qualify automatically, with the remaining teams determined by the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier.
As of 2023, a total of eight editions have been held and eleven teams have participated, Australia, having won the tournament a record six times (2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2020, 2023) are the most successful team, while England (2009), and West Indies (2016) have one title each. In August 2024, ICC announced that the United Arab Emirates will host the Women’s T20 World Cup instead of Bangladesh although the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) continue to host the event. The matches are scheduled to be played at Dubai and Sharjah.
Australia are the current champions having won the 2023 edition for the sixth time, after defeating South Africa in the final.
