India are the current champions of the SAFF Championship. The next edition, which was planned for July 2025 in Sri Lanka, has now been postponed to 2026.
The South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) made this decision due to problems with the new home-and-away format they were considering. Organizing the tournament in that style was proving to be too difficult and expensive.
Ali Umar, a member of the SAFF Executive Committee, told The Edition that their marketing partner, SportsFive, had a big role in the decision. The German agency wants the tournament in a home-and-away format to increase its commercial value.
But since it would take more than two months to run the event this way, SAFF decided it wasn’t possible this year. Instead, they planned to hold the event in one place—Sri Lanka—from June 22 to July 5, 2025, but now it will happen in 2026.
Sri Lanka Will Host a New Invitational Tournament
Now that the SAFF Championship has been postponed, the focus has moved to planning an invitational tournament in Sri Lanka in July 2025. The full details of this new tournament haven’t been shared yet, but the Sri Lanka Football Federation is working with SAFF and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to finalize everything.
Originally, SAFF wanted to return to a single host format and chose Sri Lanka. However, SportsFive, the marketing partner, preferred Bangladesh or India instead, saying those countries would attract more sponsors. Since SAFF didn’t have enough money to host the event on its own, they had no choice but to postpone the championship.
