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27-03-2026
By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report
LAHORE/ KARACHI: Pakistan’s premier domestic T20 league will take place in empty stadiums due to the recent spike in oil prices, says a top official of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).
The franchise-based Pakistan Super League, set to kick off on Thursday, also cancelled its opening ceremony in Lahore, PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi said on Sunday, citing a fuel shortage caused by the conflict in the Middle East.
The league was set to be played in six cities, but now only Lahore and Karachi will be hosting the games, with the opening encounter set to be played at Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore.
Pakistan has faced soaring oil prices prompted by the United States-Israel war on Iran and the subsequent spread of the conflict across the region. Pakistan’s government has asked its citizens to restrict their movements due to rising fuel prices.
“We don’t know how long this war will continue,” Naqvi said.
“We can’t ask people to restrict their movements and then have 30,000 people in stadiums every day. We decided that as long as this (oil) crisis is ongoing, we will not have crowds at matches. This was a difficult decision, but it needed to be made. The opening ceremony will also be cancelled.”
Naqvi said the PCB will issue refunds for all sold tickets within 72 hours and will also compensate franchise owners for the loss of revenue from gate receipts.
Naqvi apologized to the four cities, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan and Peshawar that will no longer host PSL games this season. “We have to restrict our movements, and we do not want to waste our resources,” he said. “I especially apologize to Peshawar, which was due to host PSL games for the first time, (but) there will be no crowds anyway, so there was no reason to go to those cities.”
Naqvi said he consulted Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who is also the PCB patron, and the eight franchises before finalizing the decision to stage the games in empty stadiums.
Several foreign players have pulled out of PSL due to personal reasons, including Australians Jake Fraser-McGurk and Spencer Johnson, South African Ottneil Baartman and Gudakesh Motie of the West Indies.
The 2026 Pakistan Super League, also known as PSL 11 and branded as HBL PSL 11, will be the eleventh edition of the Pakistan Super League, a professional franchise Twenty20 cricket league organized by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). The edition marks the league’s expansion from six to eight franchises, following the auction for new teams.
It is scheduled to take place from 26 March to 3 May 2026 across two cities of Pakistan.
After the conclusion of the tenth season in 2025, the initial ten-year franchise agreements for the six original teams expired. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) engaged Ernst & Young to conduct a valuation of the league’s assets to set new terms for the next decade (2026–2035).
In November 2025, five of the existing six franchises successfully renewed their contracts under the new financial model except Multan Sultans. As part of the PCB’s plan to expand the league from six to eight teams, an auction for two new franchises was held on 8 January 2026.
Six cities were shortlisted for consideration: Faisalabad, Gilgit, Hyderabad, Muzaffarabad, Rawalpindi and Sialkot. Following the auction, Hyderabad Kingsmen and Sialkot were selected as the seventh and eighth teams, with ownership rights acquired by FKS Group and OZ Developers respectively.
