The 2027 ODI World Cup, to be co-hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, will be a 14-team event but will include a Super Series round before the group stages, and a new Super 7 before the semi-finals.

The new structure, announced by the ICC on Wednesday following the body’s Annual Conference in Edinburgh over the weekend, was introduced, the ICC said, to “enhance consequence” in the early stages.

Teams qualifying 12th to 14th will play the Super Series round. One team from the three will progress to the Group round, becoming one of 12 teams split across two groups. The top three from each group along with the next-best-ranked team across both groups will then qualify for the Super 7, from which the top four go through to the semis.

The restructure comes after concerns were expressed about the possibility of too many dead rubbers and resulting empty stadia at the ICC’s annual conference. Prompted by the number of foregone conclusions at the recent T20 World Cup and to ensure more jeopardy in the early stages of the tournament, the ICC have decided to introduce a knockout phase earlier, rather than change the number of teams.

“The structure has been designed to strengthen the competitive narrative across every stage of the event, with matches from Round 1 and Round 2 carrying higher consequence with a highly competitive Super 7 stage witnessing 7 qualifying teams going through a round-robin stage to qualify for the semi-finals,” the ICC said.

The game has gone back and forth on the size and format of its marquee event for a number of years now; 14 teams split into groups played the 2015 World Cup (and 16 in 2011) before the move to a 10-team event in which each side played the others. In that time the T20 World Cup has become the ICC’s primary vehicle for growth but calls to expand the 50-over version have never gone away.

The ICC’s release made no reference to the entry or qualification process to the event though it is understood that remains as it was. The 14-team tournament will have 10 automatic qualifiers: the two Full Member co-hosts, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and the eight highest teams on the ODI rankings. The cut-off for those rankings is September 2026.