The Ashes: Australia's 4-1 win in 2025-26, the women's series, and the story of the urn.

Status on 22 October 2026

• Men's Ashes 2025-26: finished. Australia won 4-1 at home between November 2025 and January 2026.
• Next men's Ashes: upcoming. An ECB release about England's 2027 home fixtures is headlined "Three Ashes series"; its dates and venues were not opened in our research, so we do not give them.
• Women's Ashes: the most recent series in our research is 2025, won 16-0 by Australia.

The men's Ashes 2025-26, Test by Test

Results from cricket.com.au (through a search summary) and the ICC's headline "Australia seal 4-1 Ashes win in Sydney".

• Sydney: Alex Carey hit the winning runs as Australia chased 160, and Mitchell Starc was Player of the Series with 31 wickets (cricket.com.au, through a search summary). The same coverage puts the end of the match on 8 January 2026, a date we have not confirmed elsewhere.
• Melbourne: cricket.com.au's headline says England's win ended a wait of 5,468 days without a Test win in Australia.

The men's Ashes 2023

The 2023 series in England was drawn 2-2 (cricket.com.au, through a search summary). Australia had already kept the Ashes when the fourth Test in Manchester was drawn after the fifth day was washed out. England then won the fifth Test at The Oval by 49 runs to level the series, with Stuart Broad taking the last wicket in his final Test before retiring. As holders since their 2017-18 home series, Australia retained the Ashes on the drawn result.

The women's Ashes

MCC records that the women's Ashes became a multi-format series in 2013. It is decided on points across the formats played, which is why results read like 8-8 or 16-0.

The 2025 series ended with the one-off day-night Test at the MCG, which Australia won by an innings and 122 runs. Alana King took 9 for 98 and Beth Mooney made her first Test century (cricket.com.au). The ICC's headline called it a whitewash.

The name came late to the women's game. When England first toured Australia for Tests in 1934, their manager Betty Green said there were no Ashes in women's cricket, according to Cricket Australia's history of that tour.

Where the name came from

MCC dates the name to England's defeat by Australia at The Oval on 29 August 1882, England's first loss to Australia at home. Set 85 to win, England were bowled out for 77, largely because of Fred Spofforth. The Sporting Times then printed a mock obituary of English cricket, ending with the line that the body would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. Martin Williamson (ESPN, 2006) names its author as Reginald Shirley Brooks, a young London journalist.

When the obituary appeared is given two ways, both by MCC: its Ashes history page says a day after the match, while its Father Time Wall entry says three days later. Neither gives a calendar date.

Weeks later an England side under the Hon. Ivo Bligh, later Lord Darnley, toured Australia, Bligh vowing to bring back "the ashes". MCC says England won the three-match series 2-1, and a fourth match, arranged later, was won by Australia. MCC says the term was then largely forgotten for about 20 years, until Pelham Warner revived it after his winning tour of 1903-04.

The urn: what MCC says, and what is disputed

• When and how it was given. MCC's account is that Bligh received a small terracotta urn on Christmas Eve 1882, after a social match at Rupertswood, Sir William Clarke's estate near Sunbury outside Melbourne. An older version, based on a statement Bligh made in 1894, has a group of Victorian women presenting it after the third Test in 1883. Williamson (ESPN, 2006) says the Melbourne-women story was long believed; researchers Ronald Willis and Joy Munns concluded it was Christmas 1882 (as summarised by Wikipedia, secondary).
• What is inside. MCC's Father Time Wall says a burned bail. Williamson records that it was long thought to be a bail from the third match, that in 1998 Lord Darnley's 82-year-old daughter-in-law said it held the remains of her mother-in-law's veil, and that other evidence points to a ball.
• The object. MCC gives the urn as 10.5 cm tall and 124.8 g, of unknown origin, possibly a perfume bottle or cosmetic jar from Lady Clarke's dressing table.
• Not a trophy. Bligh treated the urn as a personal gift. After his death in 1927 his widow, Florence, gave it to MCC. MCC states that it regards the urn as a personal memento of Lord and Lady Darnley and that it is not, and never has been, a trophy.
• The trophy that is presented. MCC says that in the 1990s, after talks with the ECB and Cricket Australia, it commissioned an urn-shaped Waterford Crystal trophy. It was first handed to Mark Taylor after Australia won the 1998-99 series and has gone to the winning captain of each Australia v England Test series since.

The first Test of all, at Melbourne in 1877, and more on 1882 are on the first Test and the Ashes. Other Test series of 2024 to 2026 are on major Test series.