Men's and women's A sides, as well as the men's U19s, will all play multi-format series in India this September-October
Aussies set for BGT trial run in three-team India tour
Test hopefuls will be given a final trial run for next year's Border-Gavaskar Trophy tour as part of a bumper September-October stretch that will see three Australian development teams play simultaneously in India.
The Australia A men's team will return to India for a second time in a year, facing India A in a two four-dayers and three one-dayers from September 22 to October 11, the Board for Control of Cricket in India announced Thursday.
All five matches will be hosted by the southern Indian city of Puducherry, around 160 kms south of Chennai where Australia will face India in the second of next year's five-match Test tour.
Australia A men's tour of India 2026
September 22-25: First four-day match, Puducherry
September 29-October 2: Second four-day match, Puducherry
October 6: First one-day match, Puducherry
October 9: First one-day match, Puducherry
October 11: First one-day match, Puducherry
Like last year's, the tour will overlap with the start of the men's domestic season. While it also runs concurrently with Australia's ODI series in Zimbabwe and South Africa, Test specialists could conceivably feature in at least the first four-day A game in India before heading to South Africa for the series-opening Test in Durban on October 9.
Australia's Under-19 men's side will meanwhile face their Indian counterparts from September 18 to October 8 in Rajkot and Ahmedabad, while an all-format women's A series will run from September 12 to October 2 in Mohali and Dharamshala.
Australia A women's tour of India 2026
September 12: First T20, Mohali
September 15: Second T20, Mohali
September 17: First one-day match, Dharamshala
September 20: Second one-day match, Dharamshala
September 23: Third one-day match, Dharamshala
September 29-October 2: Only four-day match, Dharamshala
It marks the first women's A tour of India by an Australian side since 2018 and forms part of an ongoing four-year agreement between the two countries after Australia hosted A tours in 2024 and 2025.
It will coincide with the start of the women's domestic season but wrap up before Australia's home ODI and T20I series against Bangladesh in October. Australia's women will next tour India in late 2027-early 2028 for a multi-format series.
While all three tours this year will provide players with valuable experience on the subcontinent, the men's A trip is the most immediately relevant to an upcoming major event. Australia have not won a Test series in India in more than two decades.
Australia U19 men's tour of India 2026
September 18: First one-day match, Rajkot
September 21: Second one-day match, Rajkot
September 23: Third one-day match, Rajkot
September 27-30: First four-day match, Rajkot
October 5-8: Second four-day match, Ahmedabad
The tour beginning January 21 in Nagpur shapes as the most challenging series in a busy 12-month stretch that will feature up to 21 Tests, and could determine whether they qualify for next year's World Test Championship final.
The condensed schedule only adds to the importance of the A tour. In 2023 when Australia last toured India, players had more than month after their preceding home Test season concluded before the series opener in Nagpur. A short spin camp in Sydney was followed by an immersive training block in Alur, near Bengaluru.
This time, there is less than a fortnight between the end of the Sydney Test against New Zealand (on January 8) and the first Test against India (again in Nagpur, on January 21).
Australia A coach Tim Paine raved of the benefits provided to fringe Test players like Sam Konstas, Campbell Kellaway, Cooper Connolly, Xavier Bartlett and Todd Murphy during last year's campaign in Kanpur and Lucknow.
Paine pointed to Kellaway learning about conserving energy when the young opener was left exhausted after training too hard leading into a match, and Murphy learning how to grip the ball when his hands were drenched in sweat.
Players also left the country with an understanding of the different characteristics of red and black soil pitches. "Chatting to guys before we came over, they had no idea that there were two different types of clays in India," Paine told cricket.com.au last year.
"We've been coming here as a cricketing nation for a long, long time and if we're totally honest, the results over that period haven't got a hell of a lot better, have they?
"Certainly in red-ball cricket, it's an extremely tough place to come and win. In terms of the Test match conditions, it is extremely foreign, extremely challenging … we can't just expect these young guys to come over here on a Test tour and expect them to be able to nail it without ever experiencing it beforehand."