Big Bash League to open its 2026-27 season in Chennai, its first match outside Australia
The Big Bash League will begin its 2026-27 season at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium, the first time the Australian T20 competition has staged a match outside Australia.
Jul 10, 2026
Australian franchise cricket is coming to Chennai. The opening game of the 2026-27 Big Bash League, the tournament’s 16th season, will be played at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on 12 December 2026, with the Melbourne Renegades set to host the Perth Scorchers. Every previous BBL match, going back to the competition’s first season in 2011-12, had been played in Australia.
The fixture was confirmed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese, who announced it as part of a sports collaboration roadmap between the two countries. Taking opening night to one of world cricket’s biggest markets is new ground for a league that has spent 15 seasons entirely at home.
Why Chennai
Chepauk is a sensible place to start. The ground has hosted top-level Twenty20 cricket for years through the Indian Premier League, the crowds turn up in numbers, and a floodlit night game there rarely wants for noise. For the Renegades and Scorchers, both among the BBL’s more established names, it means opening the season in front of an audience far bigger than anything the competition draws back home.
Only the one match is travelling. There had been talk of taking more of the tournament to India, but scheduling got in the way, so the rest of the BBL will run in Australia across its usual December-to-January window. Chennai gets the curtain-raiser and nothing else, at least this time.
What was said
Modi kept his focus on reach. “I am happy that a Big Bash League match will be hosted in Chennai, India,” he said. “Hosting a match in India for any league guarantees a massive reach and viewership.”
Cricket Australia is banking on exactly that. Alistair Dobson, the board’s general manager of Big Bash Leagues, described the game as part of “a much bigger initiative across both our governments” and called cricket “a connector for both our countries.” He went further on the numbers, saying CA expected the match to be “the most-watched game in Australian domestic league history for any sport.”
A one-off, not a takeover
For anyone reading this as the first step towards selling the Big Bash to India, chief executive Todd Greenberg has already pushed back. He has said Cricket Australia is not looking to hand the league over, and that any decisions on franchise partners would sit with the states. The Chennai game is a shop window, not a sale.
That still makes it worth watching. One night, two big BBL sides, and a market Australian cricket has wanted a foothold in for a long time. If the viewership lands where CA expects, the argument for coming back gets a lot easier to make.