25 August 2026 · Ian Kerr
Bangladesh: the cricket tour almost nobody makes
England are expected in Bangladesh in February 2027 for two Test matches, and hardly anybody from home will go with them.
That is the whole reason to.
We have been to Bangladesh twice. It is one of the least-travelled countries in Asia and one of the most rewarding — a place where a Test match is an event rather than a fixture, where the tea country in the north-east is as beautiful as anywhere on the subcontinent, and where the reception a visiting supporter gets is unlike anything you will find in Australia or the Caribbean.
It is also a trip that rewards a bit of preparation. So here is what we know, and — just as importantly — what we do not know yet.
Start here: nothing is fixed
At the time of writing there is no published fixture list for this tour. No dates, no venues, nothing official from the ECB or the ICC. A two-Test series in February 2027 is widely expected and is being marketed by several operators, ourselves included, but until the schedule is confirmed everything below about when and where should be read as expectation rather than fact.
We will update this page the moment it is confirmed. If you would like us to tell you directly, get in touch and we will.
The cricket
Bangladesh's three currently active Test venues are in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. A two-Test series will be played at two of them, and which two is not yet published.
The most likely first venue is Dhaka, at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium at Mirpur, north-west of the centre. It holds around 25,000 and it is loud. Mirpur has a reputation for producing results — slow, gripping surfaces where a game can turn in a session and where spin does most of the talking.
The second is expected to be Sylhet, up in the north-east near the Indian border, which would be the pick of the three for anyone travelling. Sylhet is the heart of Bangladesh's tea country: hills, estates and forest, and about as far from Dhaka in character as it is possible to get without leaving the country.
Chittagong is the third possibility, on the coast in the south-east — Bangladesh's second-largest city and its main port. If the fixture list puts a Test there instead, it is no bad thing: it puts you within reach of Cox's Bazar and, for many of our travellers, somewhere rather more significant. More on that below.
The tour falls inside Ramadan
Ramadan in 2027 is expected to begin around 8 February and run to around 8 March, with Eid al-Fitr on or about 9 March — all subject to the moon sighting. A February Test series would sit inside it.
We think that is a reason to go rather than a reason not to.
February is Bangladesh's finest month — dry, cooler, comfortable. Add Ramadan to that and you are travelling through a country in a state most visitors never see. The evenings transform. Iftar, the breaking of the fast at sunset, is a genuinely communal event: streets full, food stalls going, families and strangers eating together. Dhaka in the hour after dusk during Ramadan is one of the great sights of Asian travel, and you cannot buy a ticket to it.
What it means day to day
- Many restaurants close or restrict their hours during daylight. International hotels carry on serving their guests as normal and are entirely used to it.
- Eating and drinking in public during daylight hours is discouraged. It costs nothing to be discreet, and it is noticed and appreciated.
- Alcohol is not widely available in Bangladesh, but visitors can drink in licensed hotel bars and clubs — you do not need a permit yourself, though Bangladeshi nationals do. Expect availability and hours to be more limited during Ramadan than at other times of year.
- Traffic in Dhaka in the hour before iftar is the heaviest of the day, every day. You would be travelling back from the cricket into exactly that window. We build the transfers around it, but it is worth knowing why the driver takes the route he takes.
Visas and entry
A visa is required for UK passport holders. Apply in advance through the Bangladesh High Commission in the UK. That is the route we recommend and the only one we would rely on.
A visa on arrival is available at Dhaka airport, but it is not guaranteed — gov.uk states it is issued at the immigration officers' discretion, and typically requires a confirmed return ticket and proof of funds. It is single entry and valid for 15 to 30 days. We would not plan a trip of this size around it.
Your passport needs at least two blank pages, must be undamaged, and must be valid for at least six months from the start of your visa.
Always speak to your GP or a travel health clinic well before you travel. Health certificates may be required — a yellow fever certificate if you're arriving from a risk country, and polio vaccination in certain circumstances. TravelHealthPro carries the current detail.
Check before you travel. Entry rules change. Confirm the current position with the Bangladesh High Commission and on gov.uk before you book flights, and again before you travel. We will give every client the current requirements in writing before anything is confirmed.
Safety
We are not going to characterise this for you, because it is not our assessment to make and it changes.
What we can say is factual and checkable. As things stand, the FCDO advises against all but essential travel to one part of the country: the Chittagong Hill Tracts — the districts of Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. gov.uk is explicit that Chittagong city and the rest of Chittagong Division are not included in that advice. Separately, the FCDO urges caution in the area near the Myanmar border, around Ukhia and Teknaf.
Nothing on this tour, and nothing in the extensions we would suggest, sits in the area under that advisory. Dhaka, Sylhet, Srimongol, Chittagong city and Cox's Bazar town are all outside it.
For the current advice, go to the FCDO travel pages on gov.uk. That is the authoritative source, and we would rather point you at it than summarise it.
Getting around, and the truth about Dhaka traffic
Dhaka's average traffic speed is around 7 km/h — barely above walking pace, and down from around 21 km/h a decade earlier. That figure is the World Bank's, reported in 2017. It is the most recent we can source, and it is now some years old.
Plan around it. From the hotels we use, realistically allow 30 to 45 minutes from Banani and up to an hour from Gulshan, before you add match-morning peak. We would rather tell you that now than have you sitting in a car wondering.
Getting to and from the cricket is arranged for you. Dhaka traffic is heavy and journey times vary a great deal, so transfers are timed around it rather than left to chance.
Between venues
If the schedule takes the series to Sylhet, there's a domestic air route from Dhaka — around 55 minutes. We don't sell or book flights of any kind, domestic or international, so that would be yours to arrange.
There's an alternative, and we think it makes the better trip. Drive, and stop at Srimongol — the tea capital of Bangladesh, and on the road between the two. It turns a long day in a car into two days through the most attractive country in Bangladesh: tea estates running to the horizon, hills, forest, and a pace of life about as far from Dhaka as it's possible to get. Stay overnight at a tea resort, walk the gardens in the morning, and arrive having actually seen the place rather than overflown it.
If your itinerary includes both venues, it's the single best thing you can add — and unlike the flight, it's something we can put together for you.
What else is worth your time
In Dhaka. Lalbagh Fort, the unfinished seventeenth-century Mughal fort in the old city. The National Parliament building — designed by Louis Kahn, and one of the genuinely great buildings of the twentieth century, which surprises people who did not know it was here. Old Dhaka by rickshaw, which is chaos and is the point. And Sadarghat, the river port on the Buriganga, which is as busy and as alive as anywhere in the city.
Around Sylhet. The tea estates. Jaflong, up on the Indian border in Gowainghat, where the river comes down out of the Meghalaya hills over a bed of stones with the mountains standing behind it.
Further afield. If you have time either side: Cox's Bazar, widely described as one of the longest natural sea beaches in the world; and the Sundarbans, which UNESCO records as the largest mangrove forest on earth and which is home to the Royal Bengal tiger.
Extensions like these are exactly the sort of thing we build around a trip. Ask, and we will put something together.
How we are selling this
Plainly, because it matters.
Follow On Tours is the tour operator. We contract with you directly, we take the booking, and the responsibility for the package is ours. We are not an agent putting you in touch with somebody else.
We are ABTOT bonded — membership number 5718. Our packages are ground arrangements only: hotels, match tickets, private transfers and the things around them. We do not sell or book flights of any kind, so you arrange your own travel to Bangladesh and we meet you when you land. Because we do not sell flights, ATOL does not apply to what we do — the ABTOT bond is the protection that does.
Every trip is built one at a time. Come for one Test, come for both, choose your own hotel, add nights where you want them. There is no coach party and no fixed departure — you get a representative on arrival, private drivers throughout, five days of Grandstand tickets, and our team on the end of a phone.
Being straight with you. This tour is not confirmed yet. There is no published fixture list, and some of the detail is still being finalised with our partner in Bangladesh. We are close, and we are genuinely excited about it — Bangladesh is one of the first tours we will sell as a package under our own name, and it is the sort of trip we started this company to do.
If you want to be told the moment it opens, get in touch and we will put you at the front of the queue.
Follow On Tours — Bespoke. Global. Intelligent. Personal.
More on Bangladesh: our Bangladesh travel guide