After the bloated 18-team, three-pool edition of 2024–25 drew criticism for diluting quality, the PCB rebuilt the tournament for 2025–26 around merit-based qualification. Six teams retained their places from the previous season’s standings — Abbottabad, Bahawalpur, Islamabad, Lahore Whites, Peshawar and Sialkot — and four more earned their spots through the 12-team Hanif Mohammad Trophy (a non-first-class four-day tournament played 15 August to 17 September 2025): Faisalabad, FATA, Karachi Blues and Multan (per the PCB’s 7 July 2025 calendar announcement).

The ten sides played a single round robin — 46 four-day matches in all — across five venues: Abbottabad Cricket Stadium, Rawalpindi’s Shoaib Akhtar Stadium, Peshawar’s Imran Khan Cricket Stadium, and Islamabad’s Diamond Club and Marghzar grounds. Karachi Blues topped the table (161 points) and beat defending champions Sialkot in the final at Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, to claim their 10th Quaid-e-Azam Trophy title. Sialkot’s Saad Baig was player of the series with exactly 1,000 runs, while Ali Usman took 48 wickets — the most in the tournament.

The season before, Sialkot had won their third title by defeating Peshawar in the Karachi final on 5 January 2025 — so the 2025–26 edition was, in effect, a rematch story with the roles reversed.

Why the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy matters

• It is the Test selection trials. Almost every Pakistan Test debutant since the 1950s earned their cap on the back of QEA Trophy runs or wickets.
• It tests technique over four days. Flat early-season pitches, reverse swing and spin on days three and four separate Test prospects from white-ball hitters.
• Prize money and contracts ride on it. Top performers from the Hanif Mohammad Trophy were also considered for PCB domestic contracts and guest-player roles in the QEA Trophy.

The President’s Trophy Grade-I is the first-class competition for departmental teams — organisations like banks, gas companies and state broadcasters that employ cricketers as staff. In 2024–25, nine departments played a round robin (8 January–8 March 2025): Eshaal Associates, OGDC, SNGPL, Pakistan Television, State Bank of Pakistan, WAPDA, KRL, HEC and Ghani Glass.

Pakistan Television won their first title, beating State Bank of Pakistan by three wickets in the final, with PTV’s Muhammad Shahzad named player of the series. Ayaz Tasawwar scored 867 runs and Mushtaq Ahmed took 52 wickets. The bottom two sides face relegation to the President’s Trophy Grade-II — keeping the departmental ladder genuinely competitive.

The departmental system is Pakistan’s safety net for cricketers: it provides salaried jobs to hundreds of first-class players who might otherwise struggle, and it returned to the domestic map after departments were excluded from first-class cricket during the 2019–23 six-team restructuring.

According to ESPNcricinfo’s reporting, the PCB plans to expand the 2026–27 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy to 20 teams — all 16 regional associations get first-class status, with Sialkot and Peshawar each allowed an extra side (Lahore and Karachi already field two each as the country’s biggest cricketing centres). The tournament will be split into gold and silver divisions: the top eight sides in gold, the rest in silver. The Hanif Mohammad Trophy has, for now, been axed.

It is the latest turn in a structure that has changed constantly — from departments to six regional teams (2019–23), to 18 teams, to 10, and now 20. Whether the bigger tent raises standards or dilutes them again will be the story of the season.