Europe’s first big T20 league starts on 26 August, with Dravid and Ashwin in it
The European T20 Premier League has released its inaugural schedule: six teams, two grounds, and a Dublin franchise co-owned by Rahul Dravid and captained by Ravichandran Ashwin.
Jul 28, 2026
Europe’s first serious franchise T20 league has a fixture list. The European T20 Premier League published its inaugural schedule on Tuesday, with the season running from 26 August to 20 September and Rotterdam Dockers meeting Amsterdam Flames in the opening game at Voorburg.
For Indian viewers there is a reason to look twice. Rahul Dravid is a co-owner of the Dublin Guardians, and Ravichandran Ashwin will captain and mentor that side.
Six teams, three cricket boards
The six franchises are Amsterdam Flames, Rotterdam Dockers, Dublin Guardians, Belfast Wolves, Edinburgh Castle Rockers and Glasgow Cosmic, built in partnership with Cricket Ireland, Cricket Scotland and the Royal Dutch Cricket Association. It is the first league the ICC has sanctioned to run across more than one country, which is the part that took the longest to arrange.
The Indian involvement runs deeper than two names
Ashwin arrives as a direct signing rather than a draft pick, taking on playing and coaching duties at once. Dravid’s ownership stake sits alongside a founding group that is largely Indian: the league was co-founded by Abhishek Bachchan, Saurav Banerjee, Priyanka Kaul and Dhiraj Malhotra, the last of whom was tournament director for the first IPL and the first World T20 before running Delhi Capitals as chief executive.
That is a lot of IPL operating knowledge pointed at grounds in Voorburg and Dublin. Whether it transfers is the interesting question.
Two grounds, and the honesty of the scale
The first 15 league matches are at Sportpark Westvliet in Voorburg, which holds about 1,000 people. The rest of the league stage moves to Malahide near Dublin, capacity 11,500, which also hosts the playoffs.
Thirty league games make up the round-robin, every side playing the other five twice. The team that finishes top goes straight into the final, while second and third meet in a qualifier for the other place.
Nobody is pretending this is the IPL. A 1,000-capacity ground for the opening fortnight is a league starting where its audience actually is, and there is something healthier about that than a half-empty 40,000-seat stadium.
Who filled the squads
The draft ran on 2 July, with the six franchises taking 36 players in total, 12 from each of the three boards. Rotterdam used the opening pick on the all-rounder Jai Moondra, and Belfast Wolves landed Ireland’s Paul Stirling.
The ownership lists read like a retirement reunion. Jonty Rhodes, Faf du Plessis and Heinrich Klaasen are behind Rotterdam, Steve Waugh is involved at Amsterdam, Glenn Maxwell at Belfast and Matthew Hayden at Glasgow. Steve Smith and Mitchell Marsh are among the overseas players attached to the competition.
It nearly did not happen at all
The first season was meant to be played in 2025 and was pushed back a year after investment delays and a shift in where the money wanted to go, with some backers preferring established competitions. A published schedule is the first hard evidence that the second attempt is real.
Twenty-six days, six teams and two grounds is a modest way to start. Europe has never had a league like it, so modest is still further than anyone else has got.