What Is the Afghanistan Premier League? APL Explained

The Afghanistan Premier League is a franchise Twenty20 competition run by the Afghanistan Cricket Board. It has been completed once. In October 2018, five city sides played 23 matches at Sharjah Cricket Stadium. Balkh Legends beat Kabul Zwanan by four wickets in the final. Rashid Khan, who captained the losing side, was player of the series. Then the league stopped.

The stop was not a one-week pause. Commercial disputes, contracts and questions about how the league was being run kept it off the calendar for years. Afghanistan's players did not stop. They became regulars in the IPL, PSL, CPL, SA20, ILT20 and the Big Bash. The national side, a Full Member since 2017, kept producing bowlers and openers that other leagues wanted. What the country did not have was a stable league of its own.

In December 2025 the board said the APL would return as a five-team franchise tournament, staged in the United Arab Emirates. The official site later put a number on the shape: five teams, 24 matches, first ball on 27 December 2026 at 5:30 PM Afghanistan time (official site: 5:00 PM Dubai time). Trophy in hand by then too. It was unveiled in August 2026 and has been called the Koh-e-Zafar, a mountain name for a mountain cricket story. If you want the longer version of why any of this matters, the essay on Afghan cricket is the one to read.

The five 2026 clubs are Akcel United Kabul, Balkh Zwanan, Kandahar Warriors, Nangarhar Cosmic and Paktia. Captains, as corrected by the board on 3 November 2026, are Azmatullah Omarzai, Ibrahim Zadran, Rashid Khan, Rahmat Shah and Rahmanullah Gurbaz. Head coaches include Mickey Arthur, Ravi Bopara, Shane McDermott, Toby Radford and Azhar Mahmood. Mentors include Irfan Pathan, Mark Boucher, Waqar Younis, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Nikhil Chopra. That is a serious room. It is not yet a squad list.

People will blur the two eras, because the cities match. Don't. Balkh Legends are not Balkh Zwanan. Kabul Zwanan are not Akcel United Kabul. Kandahar Knights finished last in 2018. Kandahar Warriors have not played. The champions page has one name on it, and it belongs to 2018.

This site is an independent guide. It is not the board, not a franchise, and not a broadcaster. Where a fact is missing — grounds for 2026, the fixture grid, ticket prices, the TV list — the page says to be confirmed. The homepage counts down to the one published first-ball time. It does not invent the missing fixture.