T20 World Cup 2024: The qualifying pathway to begin in June

The first qualifying event for the Men's T20 World Cup 2024 will commence in Europe in June, the ICC announced on Tuesday. The 2024 World Cup, is to be held in the West Indies and the USA. Meanwhile, a record of 20 teams will be participating in the event. Twelve teams will get automatic qualification, while the remaining eight spots will be filled via the qualifying events.

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The first step in the qualifying process will be the sub-regional qualifiers, which will be held across 2022 and 2023. There, 68 teams will participate across ten events: 16 teams from Africa (two events), eight from the Americas (one event), nine from Asia (two events), and seven from the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region (two events) and 28 from Europe (three events). The three sub-regional qualifiers in Europe this year will take place across Belgium and Finland over five weeks starting June 28.

From the sub-regional qualifiers, the top teams will qualify for five regional finals, to be held in 2023. Of the two sub-regional qualifiers in Africa, four will progress to the regional Africa finals. However, eventually two for the main event in 2024. From the Americas sub-regional qualifiers, the top three teams will compete with Canada in the Americas regional finals for one spot at the World Cup.

The T20 World Cup 2024 is set to begin in June that year

One team from each of the two Asia sub-regional qualifiers will meet Bahrain, Nepal, and Oman in the regional Asia finals. They will have only the two final spots for the main event. The winners of each of the EAP sub-regional events will meet the Philippines in the EAP regional finals. After that, they will compete for one qualification spot. And each of the three sub-regional winners from Europe this June will compete with Germany in the Europe regional finals next year. They will have the last two qualification spots.

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As far as automatic qualification is concerned, eight spots will be filled by the top eight teams from the 2022 men's T20 World Cup, to be hosted by Australia this October-November. West Indies and the USA, the hosts for the 2024 event, will also get automatic berths.

The remaining two slots will be taken by the two next highest-ranked teams on the ICC's T20 rankings as of November 14 this year. In case West Indies finish in the top eight in this year's World Cup, then the top three teams based on their ICC rankings on the cut-off date will make the grade.

The T20 World Cup 2024 is set to begin in June that year. It will be the first major ICC event hosted by the USA.