England vs Pakistan Test Series 2026: Schedule & Venues

The england vs pakistan test series 2026 schedule runs to three matches across three weeks of late summer, starting at Headingley on Wednesday 19 August, moving to Lord's on Thursday 27 August and finishing at Edgbaston on Wednesday 9 September. Every day is scheduled for an 11:00 BST start. All three are five-day Tests, all three count towards the ICC World Test Championship cycle, and all three are branded as Rothesay Tests under the ECB's title sponsorship of home red-ball cricket.

That is the answer most people are looking for. The rest of this page fills in the detail around it: what each date means in practice, who is in the squads, how the series sits in the wider 2026 English summer, what the ticketing position is at each ground, and how to follow it from the sofa or the terraces.

The fixture list in full

Test	Dates	Venue	City	County	First ball
1st Rothesay Test	Wed 19 – Sun 23 August	Headingley	Leeds	Yorkshire	11:00 BST
2nd Rothesay Test	Thu 27 – Mon 31 August	Lord's	St John's Wood, London	Middlesex	11:00 BST
3rd Rothesay Test	Wed 9 – Sun 13 September	Edgbaston	Birmingham	Warwickshire	11:00 BST

A few things worth reading into that grid. The Lord's Test ends on a bank holiday Monday, which means the fifth day at the Home of Cricket falls on a day most of the country is off work — good news if the match is alive on the final morning, awkward if it finished inside four. The Edgbaston Test starts on a Wednesday in the second week of September, late enough that the light goes early and the covers are never far away. And the gap between the second and third Tests is nine days rather than the usual three or four, which gives both squads a genuine breather and gives selectors time to change their minds.

Each ground has its own dedicated guide on this site — the Headingley Test, the Lord's Test and the Edgbaston Test — covering travel, stands, gates and local detail for each.

Where the series sits in England's 2026 summer

The ECB published the full 2026 international programme well in advance, and the Pakistan Tests are the back half of a long men's season. England opened at Lord's on 4 June against New Zealand, played the second Test at the Kia Oval and the third at Trent Bridge, then handed the middle of the summer over to white-ball cricket against India — five T20 internationals through the first fortnight of July and three one-day internationals at Edgbaston, Cardiff and Lord's after them. Sri Lanka arrive for white-ball cricket in mid-September once the Edgbaston Test is done.

The New Zealand series matters for context, because it did not go England's way. England won the opener at Lord's by 115 runs on a low-scoring pitch, then lost heavily at the Oval and again at Trent Bridge, giving New Zealand the series 2-1. That is the form line England carry into the Pakistan Tests, and it is why the mood around this series is less about a comfortable home summer and more about whether the side has stabilised.

Pakistan come in off a Test tour of the Caribbean earlier in the summer, having beaten West Indies in the second match of that series in early August. Both sides sit in the lower half of the World Test Championship table for the 2025-27 cycle, which gives the three Tests a competitive edge beyond bragging rights: percentage points are hard to recover late in a cycle, and neither team can afford a whitewash on the wrong side.

England's squad and the change at the top

The biggest story attached to the england vs pakistan test series 2026 schedule is not a fixture at all. Ben Stokes retired from international cricket during the third Test against New Zealand, ending a captaincy that had run since 2022, and Joe Root was appointed to lead the Test side for a second time. Root previously captained England between 2017 and 2022 and had already deputised during the New Zealand series. Whatever else these three Tests produce, they are the first full series of his second spell.

England named a 16-man squad for the first two Tests: Root as captain, alongside Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Shoaib Bashir, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Sam Cook, Jordan Cox, Ben Duckett, Matthew Fisher, Emilio Gay, Dan Lawrence, Ollie Pope, Ollie Robinson, Jamie Smith and Josh Tongue. Lawrence, Pope and Carse were the recalls. Jacob Bethell missed out through injury, with Cox widely expected to fill the gap in the top order.

A squad for the third Test at Edgbaston is a separate announcement and will normally land in the days after the Lord's match finishes, once the selectors know what the workloads and the injuries look like. Treat any list circulating before then as speculation.

Pakistan's squad

Pakistan named a 17-man party for the England leg of their travels, with Babar Azam restored as Test captain in place of Shan Masood. That is the second headline of the series: two sides arriving with a captain who has held the job before, in both cases after a change made rather than a term completed.

The squad named for England was Babar Azam (captain), Aamir Jamal, Abdullah Fazal, Ali Usman, Azan Awais, Imam-ul-Haq, Khurram Shahzad, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Ali, Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Muhammad Awais Zafar, Muhammad Ghazi Ghori (wicketkeeper), Sajid Khan, Salman Ali Agha, Saud Shakeel, Shan Masood and Ubaid Shah. Four of those — Ali Usman, Awais Zafar, Ubaid Shah and Ghazi Ghori — were uncapped at the time of selection, and Shakeel's inclusion was announced subject to fitness. Pakistan touring parties have a habit of changing shape before the first ball, so check the PCB's own confirmation for the final XI-eligible list.

How to watch and follow in the UK

Live television rights to England's home internationals sit with Sky Sports, and the three Tests are scheduled for Sky Sports Cricket with build-up starting before the 11:00 first ball. Sky subscribers can stream through Sky Go, and NOW carries the same feed on a day or month pass for anyone who does not want a full contract.

Free-to-air viewers get highlights rather than live play. That has been the shape of the arrangement for home Tests for years, with an evening highlights package on the BBC. Ball-by-ball radio commentary comes from Test Match Special, carried on BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra and BBC Sounds, which remains the cheapest and in many people's view the best way to follow a long day's cricket while doing something else.

Exact channel numbers, highlight slots and streaming availability can shift between series, so confirm the listing on the day. Our broader guide to watching cricket in the UK sets out how the rights picture is put together across formats.

Tickets: how the process actually works

There is no single ticket office for an England home summer. Each Test is sold by the ground that stages it — Yorkshire County Cricket Club for Headingley, MCC for Lord's, Warwickshire for Edgbaston — and each runs its own system on its own timetable.

The pattern is consistent even when the dates are not:

Stage	Who it is for	Rough timing
Ballot registration	Anyone, free to enter	The autumn before the summer
Members' and supporters' priority	County members, MCC members, ECB supporters scheme	Weeks before general sale
General sale	Public	Once priority windows close
Returns and resale	Public, official platforms only	Rolling, right up to match day

The ECB opened its ballot for the 2026 summer on 2 September 2025, with priority access for members of the We Are England Cricket Supporters scheme before the general ballot. Days one to three of a Test typically clear first; days four and five are usually the ones still available late, because they may not be played at all.

Prices vary by ground, by stand and by day, and they change between seasons. Rather than quoting a figure that may be out of date by the time you read it, buy from the staging county's own ticketing site or from the official resale route it operates, and confirm the current price there. Anything advertised well above face value on a general resale marketplace is not an official allocation.

Venues, and what each one brings

Headingley is the smallest of the three and the loudest, a ground wedged into a residential corner of Leeds and shared with a rugby stadium, with a Western Terrace that has its own reputation. It has a habit of producing results — the surface tends to do something for seam bowlers on the first two mornings and then flatten out.

Lord's is the ceremonial centre of the English game and the one every touring player wants on the CV, with its slope, its honours boards and the walk through the Long Room. Pakistan have not played a Test against England there since 2018. Our history of Lord's goes into how the ground came to hold that status.

Edgbaston is the biggest of the three by capacity and generally the most partisan, with the Hollies Stand supplying a soundtrack that no other English ground manages. England and Pakistan have not met in a Test there for a decade. For the wider picture of where these grounds sit in the English circuit, see our guide to English cricket grounds.

What is at stake

Beyond the series itself, three things ride on these Tests.

The first is the World Test Championship. England spent the early part of the 2025-27 cycle losing more than they won, and Pakistan have been down in the same region of the table. Nine points are available in each match and the percentage system punishes drawn series as much as lost ones. Neither side is realistically chasing a final from here, but the difference between finishing mid-table and finishing bottom is the difference between a rebuilding narrative and a crisis one.

The second is the captaincy. Root's second stint begins here, and the questions asked of him in 2022 — whether the job costs him runs, whether he is ruthless enough with a struggling bowler — will be asked again from the first session. The longer story of who has held the job and how it has gone is in our England Test captains history.

The third is the winter. England's selection for the next Ashes cycle takes shape across these three Tests, particularly in the seam department, where the squad names four or five bowlers who have all had fitness interruptions. The Ashes archive explains why every England summer is eventually read as an audition for the following one.

Frequently asked questions

How many Tests are England and Pakistan playing in 2026?

Three. The series is a three-match Test series played across late August and early September 2026, at Headingley, Lord's and Edgbaston in that order.

When does the England vs Pakistan Test series 2026 start?

The first Test begins on Wednesday 19 August 2026 at Headingley in Leeds, with the first ball scheduled for 11:00 BST. The series finishes on Sunday 13 September at Edgbaston, if the third Test goes the distance.

What time do the Tests start in the UK?

11:00 BST on each scheduled day of play. Grounds open earlier — usually around 9:00 or 9:30 for general admission — and there is a 40-minute lunch and a 20-minute tea interval, with the timings shifted if play is interrupted.

Which channel is showing England vs Pakistan in the UK?

Sky Sports Cricket holds live rights to England's home Tests, with streaming through Sky Go and NOW. Highlights are shown free-to-air on the BBC, and BBC Test Match Special provides live radio commentary. Check the day's listings for exact times.

Are tickets still available for the 2026 Tests?

Availability varies by ground and by day, and later days generally hold stock longer than the first three. Buy directly from Yorkshire CCC, Lord's or Edgbaston, or through their official resale platforms, and confirm current prices with the county — do not rely on figures quoted second-hand.

Who is captaining England and Pakistan?

Joe Root leads England, appointed after Ben Stokes retired from international cricket during the New Zealand series. Babar Azam was reappointed as Pakistan's Test captain in place of Shan Masood.

Following the series from here

If you want the england vs pakistan test series 2026 schedule broken down match by match, the three venue guides linked above carry the travel, gate and local detail you actually need on the morning of a Test. For the surrounding season — how the counties feed the England side, what else is on while the Tests are being played — start with our cricket in England coverage and the England hub. The domestic structure that produced most of this England squad is explained in the County Championship guide, and the batting and bowling records these three Tests will nudge are collected in our England records page.