100% of your text is likely AI-generated New version: The 2026 ICC Men's T20 World Cup marked the tenth edition of this exciting tournament, co-hosted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India and Sri Lanka Cricket from February 7 to March 8, 2026. This isn't the first time Sri Lanka has taken the stage; they previously hosted the event in 2012, while India welcomed it in 2016. In total, twenty teams battled it out in 55 matches held across five venues in India and three in Sri Lanka. A total of twenty teams took part in the tournament, featuring the two host teams, six of the top seven teams from the last edition, the four highest-ranked teams in the ICC Men's T20I Team Rankings that hadn’t already qualified, and eight other teams that made it through regional qualifiers. This marked Italy's first-ever qualification for the Men's T20 World Cup. India came into the tournament as the defending champions, having clinched the title in 2024. They successfully defended their crown by beating New Zealand by 96 runs in the final, making history as the first team to win two consecutive T20 World Cups, the first nation to secure the title on home soil, and the first team to lift the trophy three times overall. The tournament kept the same format as last time. A total of 20 qualifying teams were split into four groups of five. During the group stage, each team faced off against every other team in their group once, following a round-robin style. The top two teams from each group then moved on to the Super 8 stage, where they were organized into two groups of four. Before the tournament kicked off, the ICC announced the eight seeded teams based on the ICC T20I rankings, placing them in specific spots in the Super 8 stage, regardless of how they performed in the group stage. If a non-seeded team knocked out a seeded team, they took over the spot of the seeded team that didn’t make it through. In the Super 8 stage, every team played against all the others in their group once again. The top two teams from each group advanced to the knockout stage, which included two semi-finals, with the winners going head-to-head in the final. Just a heads up, no points were carried over between the stages!