Cricket fans in India won’t have to wait long to get their next fix of international action. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has officially announced the fixtures for Team India’s 2026-27 home calendar and it is likely to be one of the busiest home schedules in recent history. The action kicks off on September 27 with the West Indies arriving for a white-ball tour, setting the tone for a packed few months of cricket across the country.
West Indies Tour Gets Things Rolling
The West Indies series will open with three ODIs before moving into a five-match T20I leg, giving fans a good mix of formats right from the start. The one-day matches are set to be played in Trivandrum, Guwahati, and New Chandigarh, with Trivandrum hosting the series opener on September 27. Once the ODIs wrap up, the action shifts to T20Is, which will be spread across Lucknow, Ranchi, Indore, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. The tour runs into mid-October, giving both teams a fairly packed few weeks of white-ball cricket to work through.
It’s a solid way to reopen the home season, and it also gives the Indian team management a chance to look at bench strength and try out combinations before the year gets more serious with red-ball cricket later on. West Indies touring India has become something of a regular fixture in recent years, and while it may not carry the box-office pull of a series against Australia or England, it still offers a useful platform for fringe players to stake their claim ahead of bigger assignments.
A Season That Doesn’t Let Up
What makes this home season particularly notable is just how much cricket is packed into it. Beyond the West Indies series, India will also host Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and Australia across the coming months, taking the total home season to 22 international matches spread across 17 cities. That’s a genuinely wide net, and it includes venues that don’t always get a steady diet of international fixtures, like New Chandigarh, which is set to host matches during the West Indies leg itself.
After the West Indies tour wraps up, Sri Lanka will be next in line, arriving in December for another white-ball series comprising three ODIs and three T20Is. The Sri Lanka ODIs are expected to open in Delhi, with the T20I leg following shortly after in cities including Rajkot, Cuttack, and Pune. Once the calendar flips into the new year, Zimbabwe will make a shorter stop for an ODI series, giving India another opportunity to rotate personnel and manage workloads ahead of the season’s marquee event.
That marquee event, of course, is the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia, which headlines the back end of the home season. The five-match Test series is set to begin in late January, with fixtures lined up across venues including Nagpur, Chennai, and Guwahati as the season moves toward its climax in February. For a team that’s just come off winning the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, a full Test series against Australia at home is about as high-stakes as domestic cricket assignments get, and it’s likely to dominate headlines once it arrives.
Why the Scheduling Matters
There’s a clear logic to how the season has been laid out. The white-ball matches against West Indies, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe are bunched into the earlier months, taking advantage of September through January conditions that suit day-night cricket well. Test cricket, by contrast, has been pushed to late January and February, timed for cooler, more batting-and-bowling-friendly conditions that Indian pitches tend to offer that time of year. It’s a sequencing choice that BCCI has leaned on before, and it seems designed to get the most out of both formats rather than cramming everything together.
The spread of venues is also worth noting. Beyond the usual hosts like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad, cities such as Guwahati, Ranchi, and New Chandigarh are all getting a slice of the action, which continues the BCCI’s push in recent years to take international cricket beyond the traditional metro circuit and into venues where the sport is growing but doesn’t always get top billing.
For now, though, all eyes are on September 27, when the West Indies series gets the home season underway in Trivandrum. Match timings for the full calendar are expected to be announced closer to each series, but the framework is set: a jam-packed few months of ODIs, T20Is, and Tests that will keep Indian cricket fans busy right through to the following spring. Between the early white-ball assignments and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy waiting at the end of it, this home season has a bit of everything, and it starts with West Indies in less than a month’s time.
