Pakistan will boycott their Group A match against India in the 2026 T20 World Cup. According to a post on the Government of Pakistan’s official X account, the government has granted permission for the Pakistan cricket team to go to Sri Lanka for the event, but “the Pakistan cricket team shall not take the field in the match scheduled on 15 February 2026 against India”.

The statement did not provide a justification for the decision. The whole post on X read as follows: “The Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan grants approval to the Pakistan Cricket Team to participate in the ICC World T20 2026, however, the Pakistan Cricket Team shall not take the field in the match scheduled on 15th February 2026 against India.” It is reported that the PCB has yet to tell the ICC of the boycott.

The India-Pakistan match is by far the most lucrative – and typically the most watched – game in any ICC tournament. To capitalise on this, the ICC has guaranteed that the two teams are always in the same group at any ICC event since 2012, despite the fact that the two countries’ diplomatic relations have deteriorated, resulting in 14 years without a bilateral fixture. There is no indication on what will happen if the two sides meet in a knockout game, but the 2026 T20 World Cup appears to be the first men’s ICC event since 2010 that does not have an India-Pakistan meeting in the group stage.

Pakistan’s participation, or lack thereof, in the 2026 T20 World Cup has been called into question by PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi after Bangladesh was excluded from the event on January 24 due to their unwillingness to play in India over security concerns. Pakistan was the only country that publicly supported Bangladesh’s request for a new location, and it responded to their expulsion by accusing the ICC of favoring India. He stated that the government would eventually determine if Pakistan will participate in the tournament.

Two days later, Naqvi met with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and stated that he had been encouraged to consider all possibilities for resolving the matter. Naqvi stated at the time that the decision would be made on “Friday or next Monday”. One day before the deadline, the Pakistani government looked to have made a decision.

Speculation had grown that Pakistan will avoid a total boycott of the tournament and instead focus on the game against India. That speculation deepened after the PCB revealed a World Cup lineup ahead of the ICC deadline, and a statement – later deleted but temporarily given to the public – appeared to confirm Pakistan’s participation in the event in Sri Lanka. ESPNcricinfo contacted the PCB to find out why Pakistan declined to play their group game against India.

Pakistan is in Group A with India, Namibia, the Netherlands, and the United States, and will play all of its matches in Sri Lanka, which is co-hosting the event alongside India. They will play their first encounter against the Netherlands on February 7, the first day of the T20 World Cup, followed by matches against the USA on February 10 and Namibia on February 18. Pakistan will lose two points from their game against India if they skip the match.

According to the ICC’s Playing Conditions, the forfeiture will also have an impact on Pakistan’s net run rate, but not on India’s. According to Clause 16.10.7, if a forfeit occurs, “the net run rate of the defaulting team shall be affected in that the full 20 overs of the defaulting team’s innings in such forfeited match shall be taken into account in calculating the average runs per over of the defaulting team over the course of the relevant portion of the competition.”