The 2026 ACC Men's Premier Cup was the third edition of the ACC Men's Premier Cup, hosted by the Malaysian Cricket Association from 30 August to 12 September 2026. Ten associate teams competed in 24 matches across two venues in Malaysia, of whom eight teams directly qualified for the tournament through their performance in the 2024 Premier Cup and two advanced from the 2026 Challenger Cup. The 50-over format defending champions, Nepal defeated the 20-over format defending champions, the United Arab Emirates in the final, to win their second title. Nepal qualified for the 2027 Asia Cup, while Nepal, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong (who defeated Oman in 3rd place play-off) qualified for the 2027 Asia Cup Rising Stars.
Background The ACC Men's Premier Cup is a biennial international cricket competition in limited overs cricket format (an alternating format of 50-overs and 20-overs cricket), organised by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) since its inauguration in 2023. The competition is played by the top associate members of the ACC advancing from the ACC Men's Challenger Cup to determine qualification for the Asia Cup and the Asia Cup Rising Stars. Nepal were the 50-over format defending champions having won the 2023 edition, while the United Arab Emirates were the 20-over format defending champions having won the 2024 edition.
Format The 10 participating teams were divided into two groups of five teams each. In the group stage, each team played each of the other teams in the group once in a round-robin format for 20 matches, and the top two teams in each group advanced to the knockout stage. The knockout stage consisted of two semi-finals, a third-place play-off and a final. In the 2026 tournament, all the matches were played in 50-over format; of which only the matches involving associate teams with ODI status had international status as One Day International (ODI), while other matches were played without international status.
Teams The top 8 associate teams from the 2024 Premier Cup: Bahrain, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Nepal, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates directly qualified for the 2026 Premier Cup, while the next ranked 10 teams in the ICC T20I rankings played in the Challenger Cup. Top 2 teams in the 2026 Challenger Cup: Malaysia and Singapore advanced to the Premier Cup.
Venues
The tournament was played across 2 venues in Malaysia: 12 matches at UKM-YSD Cricket Oval in Bangi (including semi-final 2 and 3rd place play-off) and 12 matches at Bayuemas Oval in Pandamaran (including semi-final 1 and final).
Squads Following squads were announced for the tournament: Bahrain: Fiaz Ahmed, Sohail Ahmed, Asif Ali (c), Imran Anwar, Junaid Aziz, Rizwan Butt, Ali Dawood, Prashant Kurup (wk), Abdul Majid, Ahmer Bin Nasir, Yaseer Nazeer, Amaish Rana, Shujaat Rasool, Muhammad Salman, Asif Shaikh, Muhammad Wasim Hong Kong: Zeeshan Ali (wk), Kalhan Challu, Mohammad Ghazanfar, Babar Hayat, Ateeq Iqbal, Aizaz Khan, Ehsan Khan, Hassan Khan Mohammad, Yasim Murtaza (c), Nasrulla Rana, Anshuman Rath, Kinchit Shah, Ayush Shukla, Shahid Wasif Kuwait: Ummer Abbas, Mohammad Aslam (c), Meet Bhavsar (wk), Sandaruwan Chinthaka (wk), Muhammad Aqif Farooq, Adnan Idrees, Nimish Lathief, Vishwa Teja Nettem, Yasin Patel, Ravija Sandaruwan, Mohamed Shafeeq, Bilal Tahir, Abdullah Zaheer, Ali Zaheer Malaysia: Muhammad Akram, Syed Aziz (c, wk), Amir Khan, Prashant Madhukar, Saif Ullah Malik, Sharvin Muniandy, Nazmus Sakib (wk), Virandeep Singh (wk), Muhamad Syahadat, Arif Ullah, Vijay Unni, Aqeel Wahid Nepal: Basir Ahamad, Dipendra Singh Airee, Hemant Dhami, Gulshan Jha, Sundeep Jora, Karan KC, Dev Khanal, Arjun Kumal (wk), Sandeep Lamichhane (c), Sher Malla, Ishan Pandey, Rohit Paudel, Lalit Rajbanshi, Aasif Sheikh (wk) Oman: Shakeel Ahmed, Mujibur Ali, Wasim Ali, Shah Faisal, Muhammed Imran, Nadeem Khan, Hammad Mirza, Jay Odedra, Jiten Ramanandi, Hassnain Shah, Vinayak Shukla (c, wk), Jatinder Singh, Karan Sonavale, Hasnain Ul Wahab Qatar: Shahzeb Afridi, Owais Ahmed, Zubair Ali, Muhammad Asim, Amir Farooq, Zeeshan Haider, Shahzaib Jamil (wk), Ikramullah Khan, Daniel Louis, Imal Liyanage (wk), Mirza Mohammed Baig (c), Obaid ur Rahman, Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, Akshay Shankar Saudi Arabia: Ishtiaq Ahmad, Manan Ali (wk), Muhammad Atif, Zahid Iqbal, Faisal Khan, Usman Najeeb, Ahmad Raza, Sheikh Shad Saif, Muhammad Saqib, Hisham Sheikh, Syed Naqash Tanveer, Zain Ul Abidin, Waji Ul Hassan (c), Abdul Waheed Singapore: Kabir Berlia, Suryansh Gulecha, Girin Gune, Hari Kukreja, Riaan Naik, Yuvaan Pandey, Harman Singh, Manpreet Singh (c), Chandramauli Sridev, Pranav Sudarshan, Daksh Tyagi, Harsh Venkatram, Sai Venugopal (wk), Kabir Zandani (wk) United Arab Emirates: Ibrar Ahmad, Haider Ali, Rahul Chopra, Muhammad Jawadullah, Aayan Afzal Khan, Sohaib Khan, Muhammad Mohsin, Akshdeep Nath, Muhammad Shahdad, Aryansh Sharma (wk), Harpreet Singh Bhatia (c), Khuzaima Tanveer, Tanish Suri (wk), Adeeb Usmani (wk)
Warm-up matches Ahead of the tournament, Nepal toured India in August 2026 to play two warm-up matches against the Karnataka cricket team in preparation for the tournament. Nepal won both matches. Prior to the tournament, Malaysia played two warm-up matches against Nepal and one warm-up match against Kuwait at the Selangor Turf Club in Kuala Lumpur from 25 to 28 August 2026. Malaysia lost all three matches.
Group stage In the group stage, two groups of five teams played in a round-robin format for a total of 20 matches from 30 August to 8 September 2026 across the two venues. The top two teams from each group: Nepal and Hong Kong from group A and the United Arab Emirates and Oman from group B advanced to the knockout stage.
Group A Group B
Group A
Group B
Knockout stage The knockout stage consisted of two semi-finals played on 10 September, a 3rd place play-off and a final played on 12 September. The winners of the tournament: Nepal qualified for the 2027 Asia Cup, while the top 3 teams: Nepal, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong qualified for the 2027 Asia Cup Rising Stars.
Bracket
Semi-finals
3rd place play-off
Final
Malaysia v United Arab Emirates T20I series
After the tournament, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia contested a three-match T20I series at the Bayuemas Oval. The United Arab Emirates won all three matches in the series.
Following squads were announced for the series: Malaysia: Muhammad Haziq Aiman (wk), Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Amir, Syed Aziz (c, wk), Rizwan Haider, Aslam Khan, Prashant Madhukar, Sharvin Muniandy, Nazmus Sakib (wk), Pavandeep Singh, Virandeep Singh (wk), Vijay Unni, Muhammad Wafiq, Aqeel Wahid, Muhammad Amaluz Zaman United Arab Emirates: Ibrar Ahmad, Haider Ali, Rahul Chopra, Muhammad Jawadullah, Aayan Afzal Khan, Sohaib Khan, Muhammad Mohsin, Akshdeep Nath, Muhammad Shahdad, Aryansh Sharma (wk), Harpreet Singh (c), Khuzaima Tanveer, Tanish Suri (wk), Adeeb Usmani (wk)
See also
2026 ACC Women's Premier Cup
References
External links