One Day Cup 2026 Fixtures: Full England Schedule
One Day Cup10 min read2,108 words
If you are hunting for the one day cup 2026 fixtures england has staged this summer, the short version is this: the group programme ran from Tuesday 21 July to Tuesday 11 August, all eighteen first-class counties played eight matches each in two groups of nine, the quarter-finals are set for Friday 14 August, the semi-finals for Sunday 16 August, and the final is at Trent Bridge on Sunday 20 September. That last gap is not a typo. The 2026 calendar sends the competition into a five-week pause between the semi-finals and its own showpiece, which is one of several scheduling quirks worth understanding before you plan a day out.
The key dates at a glance
Everything in the competition hangs off six dates. Print these and you have the tournament.
| Stage | Date | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Group stage begins | Tue 21 July 2026 | Lancashire v Surrey at Sedbergh School opened the competition |
| Group stage | 21 July – 11 Aug 2026 | Eight matches per county, 77 matches in total |
| Final group round | Tue 11 Aug 2026 | Simultaneous starts to protect qualification integrity |
| Quarter-finals | Fri 14 Aug 2026 | Second v third from each group, hosted by the higher seed |
| Semi-finals | Sun 16 Aug 2026 | Group winners host, having skipped the quarter-finals |
| Final | Sun 20 Sept 2026 | Trent Bridge, Nottingham — a sixth successive final there |
Because the group programme is compressed into three weeks, most counties play twice a week, and a rain-hit fixture cannot always be replayed. Abandoned matches are shared as two points apiece, which in a nine-team group of eight games can decide qualification on its own. If you are checking a fixture in the days before travelling, the county's own site is the authority — grounds and start times in this competition move more often than in any other English tournament.
How the fixture list is actually built
The eighteen counties were split into two groups of nine for 2026. Group A: Gloucestershire, Kent Spitfires, Lancashire, Leicestershire Foxes, Northamptonshire Steelbacks, Notts Outlaws, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire. Group B: Derbyshire Falcons, Durham, Essex, Glamorgan, Hampshire, Middlesex, Sussex Sharks, Worcestershire Rapids and Yorkshire.
Each county plays the other eight in its group once — four at home, four away, give or take the odd asymmetry the fixture computer produces. There is no cross-group play until the knockouts, which means a Yorkshire supporter has no route to a Lancashire fixture in this competition unless both reach the semi-finals. It also means the two groups are effectively separate tournaments with separate weather, and a wet fortnight in the north-east can distort Group B in a way Group A never feels.
The competition mechanics themselves — points, net run rate, over-rate penalties and the availability rules that shape team sheets — are set out on the Metro Bank One Day Cup 2026 format page, which is the companion to this one.
Where the matches were played
This is the part that distinguishes the fixture list from every other English competition. The One-Day Cup is the outground tournament. With the Test grounds often committed elsewhere and county memberships happy to travel, a large share of matches move to festival venues, school grounds and second-tier club grounds — and the 2026 schedule leaned into it harder than most.
| Venue | County | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Sedbergh School, Cumbria | Lancashire | Fells on three sides, opened the 2026 competition |
| Radlett, Hertfordshire | Middlesex | Middlesex's regular summer home away from Lord's |
| Scarborough (North Marine Road) | Yorkshire | The best-loved festival ground in the country |
| York (Clifton Park) | Yorkshire | A newer addition to the Yorkshire outground rotation |
| Chesterfield (Queen's Park) | Derbyshire and visiting counties | Bandstand, boating lake, trees inside the boundary |
| Cheltenham College | Gloucestershire | The Cheltenham festival ground, marquees and all |
| Rugby School, Warwickshire | Warwickshire | School pitch, professional cricket, minimal fuss |
Alongside those sit the conventional headquarters: the Kia Oval, the Utilita Bowl at Southampton, the Banks Homes Riverside at Chester-le-Street, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston and the rest. The mix is deliberate. A county can sell an outground day to families for a fraction of the price of a Test-ground fixture, and a school ground with a temporary bar and a burger van produces a better atmosphere for 1,800 people than an empty 17,000-seat bowl does. The broader tour of the country's venues, from the great arenas to the festival fields, sits in the guide to English cricket grounds.
For travel, treat outgrounds as rural until proven otherwise. Sedbergh is a drive from Oxenholme on the West Coast Main Line; Radlett is a walk from Radlett station on Thameslink; Scarborough's ground is fifteen minutes on foot from the railway station; Queen's Park is a short walk from Chesterfield station; Cheltenham College is close to Cheltenham Spa. Car parks at school grounds fill early and are frequently on grass, which matters after rain.
Start times and what a day looks like
Most 2026 group fixtures started at 11:00 BST, giving a scheduled finish around 18:30 for a full fifty-over game each way. A handful — Durham's home fixture at the Riverside among them — started at 13:30 as effective day-nighters, finishing under lights around 21:00. Knockout matches carry a reserve provision and an earlier scheduled start where daylight is tight, which in mid-August is not yet a serious constraint.
A fifty-over day runs roughly: first innings 11:00 to 14:20, a 45-minute interval, second innings from 15:05, close between 18:15 and 18:45. That shape is why the competition suits people who cannot commit to four days of Championship cricket but find twenty-over cricket over too quickly — a point the guide to the structure of English domestic cricket makes about the calendar as a whole.
Why the fixtures land in these weeks
The group programme sits on top of The Hundred. That is not an accident of the fixture computer; it is the design. The eight Hundred teams take the best available white-ball cricketers from the counties for the same three weeks, so counties enter the One-Day Cup missing anywhere from three to nine first-choice players. Some send out sides with three or four teenagers in them.
The practical consequence for anyone reading a fixture list is that the name on the fixture tells you less than usual about what you will watch. A Surrey side in this competition is not the Surrey side that wins Championships; a Leicestershire side may be nearer its full strength than its more glamorous opponents. That levelling is why the honours board has recently carried Glamorgan, Kent, Leicestershire and Worcestershire rather than the usual names — and why supporters of smaller counties regard these fixtures as the most winnable of the year. The longer argument about the collision, and the competition's descent from the 1963 knockout, is told in the One-Day Cup guide; the debate about the newer tournament itself is in The Hundred explained.
The state of the groups going into the knockouts
At the last published standings before the final round of group matches, Leicestershire Foxes led Group A and Middlesex led Group B, Middlesex having won six of their first seven. Both were positioned for the prize the group stage actually offers: a straight passage to a home semi-final on 16 August, with the quarter-final weekend off.
Because only the group winner skips a round, the difference between finishing first and finishing second in this format is enormous — one extra knockout match, played away, against a side with momentum. That is the whole tension of the closing week, and it is why counties who look becalmed in mid-table on 4 August start playing like their season depends on it by 11 August. For the confirmed final placings and the quarter-final pairings, check the ECB match centre or the county sites, since the last round of group games and the knockout draw settle within days of each other.
The knockout weekend, and then the wait
The quarter-finals on Friday 14 August pit second against third from each group, hosted by the higher-placed side. The winners travel to the group winners on Sunday 16 August. That two-match, three-day sprint is the most concentrated cricket the competition produces all year, and it happens in the same week as the closing stages of the other August tournaments, which is why it rarely gets the coverage it deserves.
Then the tournament stops. The final does not follow the semi-finals; it waits until Sunday 20 September, five weeks later, at Trent Bridge. Nottinghamshire have hosted the final for six consecutive seasons now, and the September slot is a deliberate echo of the old September cup final at Lord's — a standalone occasion at the end of the season rather than an afterthought squeezed into a busy August weekend. Whether five weeks of rust serves the cricket is a fair question; whether it serves the day out is not really in doubt, since a September final at a Test ground sells better than an August one competing with everything else.
Ticket routes for both the knockout rounds and the Trent Bridge final work differently from the group stage — those are covered on the One Day Cup 2026 tickets page.
Following the fixtures as they happen
Every group match is streamed, and radio commentary runs alongside. If you cannot get to Chesterfield or Radlett on a Tuesday, you are not shut out — the practical detail of streams, apps, radio and start times is on the how to watch the One Day Cup 2026 in the UK page, and the general county-cricket viewing picture is in the guide to how to watch county cricket.
One habit worth forming: check the fixture the evening before. Outground games are more weather-sensitive than headquarters fixtures because drainage at a school or club ground rarely matches a Test venue's, and counties will announce an abandonment or a delayed start on social media well before any aggregator picks it up.
FAQ
When did the One Day Cup 2026 group stage start and finish?
The group stage ran from Tuesday 21 July 2026 to Tuesday 11 August 2026. Lancashire's home fixture against Surrey at Sedbergh School opened the competition on 21 July.
How many matches does each county play in the group stage?
Eight. Each of the eighteen first-class counties plays the other eight sides in its group of nine once, producing 77 matches across the group programme.
When is the One Day Cup 2026 final and where is it being played?
Sunday 20 September 2026 at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. It is the sixth consecutive year Nottinghamshire have staged the final.
Why is there such a long gap between the semi-finals and the final?
The semi-finals are on 16 August and the final on 20 September because the 2026 calendar treats the final as a standalone end-of-season occasion rather than part of the August knockout weekend. It is unusual, and it is worth double-checking the date with the ECB or Nottinghamshire before booking travel.
Where can I find the full list of one day cup 2026 fixtures england played, match by match?
The ECB's One Day Cup match centre carries every fixture, result and scorecard, and each county publishes its own eight-match schedule with venues and start times. County sites are the more reliable source for outground fixtures, since venue changes are announced there first.
Do the fixtures use full-strength county sides?
Usually not. The group stage overlaps The Hundred, so counties lose their leading white-ball players for the whole programme and field younger, less experienced squads. That is the competition's defining condition rather than a one-off.
Where to go next
The fixture list is only half the story: the same schedule that produces Sedbergh in July and Trent Bridge in September also produces the availability rules, the points system and the qualification maths that decide who gets there. Those sit on the format page. Wider context on the English season, its competitions and its calendar lives on the cricket in England hub and the England cricket hub, and the fifty-over education this tournament provides is the same one that built the 2019 World Cup side.
Dates and venues above reflect the published 2026 schedule as of 11 August 2026. Confirm any fixture with the ECB or the host county before travelling.