Afghanistan host India in Delhi in September, and only one of the two teams is travelling
Three T20Is at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 13, 15 and 17 September, with Afghanistan listed as the home side. It will be the first time they have hosted India, nine years after becoming a Full Member without a home ground.
Aug 15, 2026
Afghanistan will host India in a three-match T20I series in September, and every ball of it will be bowled in Delhi. The Afghanistan Cricket Board and the BCCI have put the fixtures at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 13, 15 and 17 September, a Sunday, a Tuesday and a Thursday, each starting at 7pm local time.
Afghanistan are the home side. India are the tourists. Only one of the two teams has to travel, and it is not the home side.
Why Afghanistan’s home ground is in someone else’s country
Afghanistan were confirmed as a Full Member of the ICC on 22 June 2017 and have still never staged an international at home. Security is the reason and it has not softened. What the Afghanistan Cricket Board has instead is a rotating set of borrowed grounds: the Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Sports Complex in Greater Noida first, then the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Dehradun, then the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow, with Sharjah and Abu Dhabi picking up much of the rest.
None of that is new. What is new is the opponent. Afghanistan have hosted a long list of teams on Indian soil over the past nine years. They have never hosted India.
The bilateral record is short and lopsided
Three series, all of them staged by India, is the whole history. Afghanistan’s first Test was the one-off match at Bengaluru in June 2018. India won it by an innings and 262 runs, inside two days.
The T20Is came in January 2024, and India won that 3-0, though the last of the three at Bengaluru was tied and needed a second super over to separate them after Rohit Sharma’s unbeaten 121 off 69 balls. The ODIs came this June and went the same way: seven wickets at Dharamsala, 170 runs at Lucknow where India piled up 402, nine wickets at Chennai with 128 balls to spare.
Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Hashmatullah Shahidi both made hundreds in that ODI series and it changed nothing about the scoreline, which is roughly the shape of this fixture so far.
Then everyone gets on a plane to Japan
The third T20I in Delhi is on 17 September. The Asian Games open in Aichi-Nagoya two days later, and the men’s cricket runs from 24 September to 3 October at the Korogi Sports Park. India have named a 15 for it captained by Shreyas Iyer, with Jasprit Bumrah, Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh and the 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in it. Whether the same players turn up in Delhi the week before, or India split their T20 resources across two assignments in a fortnight, is the question the calendar has quietly set.
India defend a gold medal in Japan, and it is a strange one to defend. The Hangzhou final in October 2023 was against Afghanistan. Rain arrived with Afghanistan 112 for 5 in the 19th over, the match was abandoned, and India were given the gold on their higher T20 ranking. Afghanistan collected a third straight silver without losing a ball of the final.
A rematch is not guaranteed. India go straight into the quarter-finals in Japan as a seeded side, along with Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Afghanistan do not. They are in a three-team preliminary group with Japan and Nepal, played between 24 and 26 September, and only the top two go up. Seven days after hosting India in Delhi, Afghanistan will be playing to reach the last eight.