Eight teams
The eleventh season was the first structural change to the competition since Multan Sultans joined in 2018. The ten-year agreement that had fixed the league at six teams expired after 2025, and the Pakistan Cricket Board went to auction.
The franchise arrangements that followed were complicated enough to need setting out plainly. The original Multan Sultans licence was sold in February 2026 to Walee Technologies for 2.45 billion rupees, the largest fee in the league's history; the new owners relocated the team to Rawalpindi and renamed it Rawalpindiz. Two further licences were sold, creating Sialkot Stallionz and Hyderabad Kingsmen. The Sialkot owners then sold on to CD Ventures, who moved the team to Multan and revived the Multan Sultans name. The net effect was eight teams, of which two were new, one was a relocated old one under a new name, and one was a new one under an old name.
The format changed with the numbers. Two virtual groups of four, each team playing its group twice and the other group once, ten matches each and forty in all, with the top four across the combined table going into the usual Page playoff.
Two cities
The tournament was announced for six cities on 10 March and cut to two on 22 March, four days before it began. The government and the board cited the economic effects of the 2026 Iran war and the need to restrict movement and fuel use; the opening matches were played behind closed doors. Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium and the renamed National Bank Stadium in Karachi took twenty-two matches each.
Peshawar's second
Peshawar Zalmi, champions in 2017 and beaten finalists three times since, finished top. Babar Azam made 588 runs for them and Sufiyan Muqeem, a left-arm wrist spinner, took 22 wickets and was named player of the tournament. In the Qualifier at Karachi they made 221 for 7 and bowled Islamabad United out for 151.
Hyderabad Kingsmen, in their first season, finished fourth and then won two knockout matches. They chased 160 against Multan Sultans in Eliminator 1 with 28 balls to spare, and beat Islamabad by two runs in Eliminator 2, defending 186 with Hunain Shah taking the award.
Lahore, 3 May
The final was low-scoring and short. Hyderabad were bowled out for 129 in eighteen overs; Peshawar reached 130 for 5 in 15.2. Aaron Hardie, who took four wickets and made 56, was named player of the match. Peshawar Zalmi won the competition for the second time, nine years after the first, and Hyderabad Kingsmen became the first expansion side to reach a final in its opening season.
Six centuries were scored across the forty-four matches, the most in any season, led by Kusal Mendis's 109. Shaheen Afridi's 4 for 18 was among the best bowling of a tournament in which no bowler took five in an innings.