Perth’s 2026 Test match between Australia and New Zealand at Optus Stadium to start on Wednesday, December 9

Perth’s Test match in the 2026 summer of international cricket will begin on a Wednesday, meaning the showpiece event is at risk of not reaching the weekend. Under the final year of a agreement between Cricket Australia and the WA Government signed in 2024, the opening red-ball game of the season will remain in the west. But rather than the Friday starts which have been scheduled for both last year’s Ashes opener and the start of the blockbuster 2024 series against India, Australia’s first game of a four-Test series against New Zealand will begin on Wednesday, December 9. A remarkable English batting collapse and elevated opener Travis Head’s blistering fourth-innings hundred drew last year’s game against England to a conclusion inside six sessions of cricket. Perth’s record Test match crowd total of 103,440 for the 2006-07 game of cricket’s oldest rivalry appeared certain to be broken ahead of the game, but an all-but sold-out third day not being reached allowed only 101,514 fans to come through the gates. WA Cricket curator Isaac McDonald’s pitch was backed in by the International Cricket Council, being given the highest-possible ranking of very good, but an MCG surface which the second two-day Test of the summer was played on was deemed “unsatisfactory”. Of the six Test matches played at Optus Stadium since the ground was opened in 2018, three have begun on a Friday, two have started on a Thursday and only one — a thrashing of West Indies in 2022 — had the opening day fall on a Wednesday. The only other Test match played between the two sides at Optus Stadium — a day-night game played in the midst of a severe heat wave in 2019 — began on a Thursday and drew a total of 65,540 fans over the course of four days. After a pair of Test matches are played against Bangladesh in northern Australia in August, Perth will also host the first international fixture of the summer, the opener of a three-game One-Day International series against England. The old enemy’s first fixture in the west since their stunning collapse which set the tone for a 4-1 Ashes thrashing last year has been scheduled on a Friday, with the November 13 clash to begin at 11.30am. Despite the success of the Test match between Australia and India at the newly-redeveloped WACA Ground earlier this month, no international women’s cricket will be played in WA next season. The country’s women’s cricketers will not have the chance to play another red-ball fixture in the forthcoming summer, while white-ball series pitting them against Bangladesh and New Zealand will be played in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide.