South Africa to co-host 2027 World Cup alongside Namibia and Zimbabwe

Jonhenry Wilson
Newlands cricket stadium South Africa

South Africa will be the co-host of the 2027 World Cup alongside neighbours Zimbabwe and Namibia, the ICC announced on Tuesday.

The event will be the first on the African continent since South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya jointly hosted the 2003 event.

With cricket in Kenya on the wane, and Namibia performing admirably at the recently concluded T20 World Cup, they have been awarded the joint hosting rights this time around.

Cricket SA chief Pholetsi Moseki is confident a “beautiful African World Cup” will be hosted and that the build-up to the event will be a smooth process.

He cited South Africa’s experience in hosting major sporting events as the reason for his confidence.

“We are a sports-mad nation and every time we want to host an event we want to put our best foot forward,” he said.

Truly African World Cup

“We will deliver a truly African World Cup and we will host a multitude of people from around the world and they will be excited and leave inspired. We want to deliver a beautiful African World Cup.

The hosting rights were awarded after a bidding process overseen by an ICC sub-committee which included Martin Snedden, Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Skerrit.

The African bid was accepted by the global governing body following the recommendation of the committee after a review of each of the bids.

Hosting Committee chairperson Snedden was also confident in the continent’s ability to deliver a thrilling World Cup.

“We received a range of excellent bids to host the ICC Men’s events in the next cycle,” he said.

“We were committed to ensuring a broad spread of hosts to align with the ICC strategic objective of global growth and have ended up with 14 countries who will support that long term aim.”