By Karthik Iyengar
Reviewed by Anjali DeshmukhFifteen Big Bash League seasons have been played, from 2011/12 to 2025/26, and every one of them is on this page. The competition has never had a season without a final.
Perth Scorchers lead with six titles from nine finals — twice as many as anyone else.
Sydney Sixers have three titles but have also lost five finals, more than any other club.
All eight clubs have reached a final. Seven have won one; Melbourne Stars are the exception, with three defeats and no title.
Unlike the T20 World Cup, the BBL final is close to a coin toss: the side that won the toss has taken the trophy seven times in fifteen.
Every BBL final, 2011/12 to 2025/26
Each row is read from the ball-by-ball record of the match the archive marks as the final. The winner and the margin come out of that one file.
Season | Champion | Runner-up | Margin | Final held in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2011/12 | Sydney Sixers | Perth Scorchers | 7 wickets | Perth |
2012/13 | Brisbane Heat | Perth Scorchers | 34 runs | Perth |
2013/14 | Perth Scorchers | Hobart Hurricanes | 39 runs | Perth |
2014/15 | Perth Scorchers | Sydney Sixers | 4 wickets | Canberra |
2015/16 | Sydney Thunder | Melbourne Stars | 3 wickets | Melbourne |
2016/17 | Perth Scorchers | Sydney Sixers | 9 wickets | Perth |
2017/18 | Adelaide Strikers | Hobart Hurricanes | 25 runs | Adelaide |
2018/19 | Melbourne Renegades | Melbourne Stars | 13 runs | Melbourne |
2019/20 | Sydney Sixers | Melbourne Stars | 19 runs | Sydney |
2020/21 | Sydney Sixers | Perth Scorchers | 27 runs | Sydney |
2021/22 | Perth Scorchers | Sydney Sixers | 79 runs | Melbourne |
2022/23 | Perth Scorchers | Brisbane Heat | 5 wickets | Perth |
2023/24 | Brisbane Heat | Sydney Sixers | 54 runs | Sydney |
2024/25 | Hobart Hurricanes | Sydney Thunder | 7 wickets | Hobart |
2025/26 | Perth Scorchers | Sydney Sixers | 6 wickets | Perth |
Set out by club, with finals lost alongside titles won, the league is less even than the fixture list suggests:
Club | Titles | Finals lost | Finals played |
|---|---|---|---|
Perth Scorchers | 6 | 3 | 9 |
Sydney Sixers | 3 | 5 | 8 |
Brisbane Heat | 2 | 1 | 3 |
Hobart Hurricanes | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Sydney Thunder | 1 | 1 | 2 |
Adelaide Strikers | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Melbourne Renegades | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Melbourne Stars | 0 | 3 | 3 |
Perth Scorchers and the six titles
Perth have won the BBL six times — in 2013/14, 2014/15, 2016/17, 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2025/26 — which is twice the tally of the next club. They have also played nine finals, three more than they have won, and the two they lost first were the league's opening two seasons.
Their widest win is also the widest in BBL history: 79 runs against Sydney Sixers in the 2021/22 final in Melbourne, where the Sixers were bowled out for 92. Their record in our published BBL points tables matches the finals record — in the 2022/23 season they finished the league stage on 22 points, which is the joint-highest total in any table we hold: three IPL sides have also reached 22, Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians in 2013 and Kings XI Punjab in 2014. The club's season-by-season squad and results are on the Perth Scorchers page.
Sydney Sixers have played the most finals
The Sixers won the very first BBL final in 2011/12 and have reached seven more since, which is eight in fifteen seasons. They have won three of them. The five defeats are the most of any club, and four of those five were against Perth: in 2014/15, 2016/17, 2021/22 and 2025/26.
Their two other titles came back to back, in 2019/20 and 2020/21, both at home in Sydney. The 2019/20 final carries the lowest totals in BBL history — the Sixers made 116 for 5 and Melbourne Stars were held to 97 for 6 — but the comparison needs a caveat we can see in the ball-by-ball record: only 148 deliveries were bowled in that match against the usual 240, so it was not a full twenty overs a side.
Melbourne Stars are the only club without a title
Every one of the eight BBL clubs has played in a final. Seven have won one. Melbourne Stars have played three — in 2015/16, 2018/19 and 2019/20 — and lost all three, twice by fewer than twenty runs.
Two of those defeats came in Melbourne. In 2015/16 they lost at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to Sydney Thunder by three wickets, and in 2018/19 they lost the city's only all-Melbourne final to the Renegades by thirteen runs.
Six of the fifteen finals were played in Perth
The BBL final is not held at a fixed neutral venue, and the effect is visible in the record. Six of the fifteen have been played in Perth, and the Scorchers played in all six, winning four of them. Sydney has hosted three, Melbourne three, and Adelaide, Hobart and Canberra one each.
Canberra is the odd one out: the 2014/15 final was the only one played in a city that has no BBL club, and it was won by Perth against Sydney Sixers by four wickets.
The league doubled in size, then cut back
Counting the matches in the archive season by season shows a competition that changed shape twice, and it explains why comparing a 2012 champion with a 2020 one is not comparing like with like.
Seasons | Matches in the season | What it means |
|---|---|---|
2011/12 to 2012/13 | 27–28 | Each club played the others once |
2013/14 to 2017/18 | 32–43 | Gradual growth |
2018/19 to 2022/23 | 59–61 | A full double round, more than twice the first season |
2023/24 to 2025/26 | 41–44 | Cut back by roughly a third |
The five seasons from 2018/19 to 2022/23 are the long ones, peaking at 61 matches in 2019/20, 2020/21 and 2022/23. From 2023/24 the season was cut to the low forties. A title won across 14 league games is a different achievement from one won across 8, which is worth keeping in mind when the honours list is read as a straight ranking.
What the toss is worth in a BBL final
Very little, on this evidence. The side that won the toss has gone on to win seven of the fifteen finals, which is what you would expect from a coin. That is worth stating because the same count in a different competition looks nothing like it: in the T20 World Cup the toss winner has taken eight of ten finals.
Neither number is a prediction. Fifteen matches and ten matches are both small samples, and a coin has no memory. The contrast is a caution against reading a pattern into either.
Captains have also been clear about what they want: only six of the fifteen toss winners chose to bat, and nine chose to field. That preference has grown stronger over time — in the last eight finals the toss winner chose to field seven times, the single exception being Brisbane Heat in 2022/23, who batted and lost.
The league leader wins it slightly more often than not
Seven of the fifteen seasons have a complete points table in our records. In four of those seven the club that finished the league stage first also won the final: Perth in 2016/17, 2022/23 and 2025/26, and Sydney Sixers in 2020/21. In the other three the trophy went to the side that finished second — Adelaide Strikers in 2017/18, Melbourne Renegades in 2018/19 and Sydney Sixers in 2019/20.
Four in seven is close to the figure across everything we count: of the 40 complete league tables we hold in all competitions, 18 champions had topped their league. The BBL sits almost exactly on that line, which is another way of saying its knockout does what a knockout is supposed to do.
One further pattern from the same seven tables: no BBL champion in our records has come from lower than second. That is not true of every league — Sunrisers Hyderabad won the IPL in 2016 from fourth — and it suggests the BBL finals series is less forgiving of a poor league stage than the IPL playoff is.
Fifteen finals, fifteen different players of the match
No player has been named player of the match in two BBL finals. Fifteen finals have produced fifteen different names, from Moises Henriques in the first in 2011/12 to David Payne in 2025/26.
The same holds in the other leagues we have checked: six different names in six Hundred finals, four in four SA20 finals. The only repeat anywhere in our records is Marlon Samuels, who won it in both West Indies T20 World Cup finals.
How we read these results
A champion comes from one match. The archive marks the final, the outcome field names the winner and carries the margin, and that is all a winners list needs. For the BBL that match is present for all fifteen seasons, so this list is complete: it covers every season the competition has ever played.
A points table is a different problem. It is only correct when every league match is counted, because one missing game moves both the points and the net run rate. Our BBL tables therefore cover seven of the fifteen seasons — the ones where the open archive holds a complete league stage. The other eight are listed there with the reason. The arithmetic behind the net run rate column is in our guide to net run rate.
Where the numbers come from
All fifteen finals come from the open Cricsheet archive, published under the Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0. We parse the ball-by-ball files and count the totals from the deliveries; nothing here is copied from another list.
Seasons are labelled the way the archive labels them, which is why they straddle two years: the BBL runs across the Australian summer, so 2025/26 began in December 2025 and its final was played in January 2026. Fixtures and official results can be checked against the official Big Bash League site and the match archives at ESPNcricinfo.
Questions people ask
Which team has won the most BBL titles?
Perth Scorchers, with six: 2013/14, 2014/15, 2016/17, 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2025/26. No other club has more than three.
Has every BBL team won the title?
No. Seven of the eight have. Melbourne Stars have reached three finals — 2015/16, 2018/19 and 2019/20 — and lost all three.
What was the biggest win in a BBL final?
Perth Scorchers by 79 runs over Sydney Sixers in 2021/22, when the Sixers were bowled out for 92 chasing 172.
How many BBL finals have Sydney Sixers played?
Eight, more than any other club, of which they have won three. Four of their five defeats were against Perth Scorchers.
Why do BBL seasons have two years in the name?
The competition is played across the Australian summer, starting in December and finishing in January or February. A season written as 2025/26 began in 2025 and ended in 2026.
