A December start
The fourth season moved. The first three had all begun in the second week of January; 2026 started on Boxing Day and finished on 25 January, a shift made to fit the SA20 into a calendar increasingly crowded by other franchise leagues and by South Africa's own international commitments. It brought the competition into direct competition with the traditional Boxing Day Test slot, and it brought a good deal of rain: five matches were lost or curtailed, three of them without a result and one abandoned outright.
The league table was the tightest the competition had produced. Sunrisers Eastern Cape finished top on 28 points from five wins, three defeats and two no results, helped by four bonus points and a net run rate of 1.762 that no other side approached. Pretoria Capitals and Paarl Royals both finished on 24 points with identical records of five wins and four defeats, separated only by run rate. Joburg Super Kings, who tied a match against Durban's Super Giants and won the Super Over, took fourth on 22.
Brevis at Newlands
Pretoria Capitals beat Sunrisers by seven wickets in Qualifier 1 at Kingsmead to reach the final directly. Paarl Royals beat Joburg by 36 runs in the Eliminator and then lost Qualifier 2 to Sunrisers, who chased 115 in 11.4 overs. The final therefore repeated the Qualifier 1 fixture, as it had in 2024.
Pretoria batted first at Newlands and were held to 158/7, of which Dewald Brevis made 101 from 56 balls with seven sixes - the first century in an SA20 final, and almost two-thirds of his side's total. Marco Jansen took 3/10. Nobody else in the Pretoria innings passed 20.
The chase looked settled in Pretoria's favour when Sunrisers fell to 48/4 in the ninth over and the required rate climbed past 14 an over. Matthew Breetzke and Tristan Stubbs then added 114 without being parted, Breetzke finishing on 68 not out from 49 balls and Stubbs, the captain, on 63 not out from 41. Sunrisers won with four balls to spare. Brevis was named player of the match despite finishing on the losing side.
Four seasons, three titles
Sunrisers Eastern Cape have now appeared in every SA20 final and won three of them, from league finishes of third, first, fifth and first. Quinton de Kock, in his first season with the club, made 390 runs and was named player of the tournament. Ottniel Baartman, who had taken the last wicket of the 2024 final for Sunrisers, was the leading wicket-taker with 20 for Paarl Royals.