Pakistani government bars football team from participating in the SAFF Women’s Championship hosted in Goa, India.

Pakistan will not participate in a South Asian women’s football tournament hosted by India after its team was not given clearance to travel due to ongoing geopolitical tensions between the two nations, Pakistani football officials told Al Jazeera.

“We have not been issued an NOC [no objection certificate] by the relevant authorities,” a spokesperson of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

The South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Women’s Championship will be hosted in the Indian state of Goa from May 25 to June 7, and while Pakistan is a SAFF member nation, its team will not participate in the regional competition.

Sport teams and individual athletes are required to obtain a clearance from the government before travelling to another country for a competition, and a strained relationship between the South Asian neighbours has put a halt to cross-border travel for sportspeople from both countries.

Pakistan’s name was missing from the six-team tournament when SAFF revealed the schedule earlier on Wednesday.

Group A features Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, while hosts India are drawn in Group B with the Maldives and defending champions Bangladesh.

The tournament will be hosted at Goa’s Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, which has previously hosted the men’s edition of the tournament.

Hostile relations stain sports tournaments

India and Pakistan share a decades-old history of wars and hostile relations.

The bitter rivals came close to an all-out war in May 2025, when the nuclear-armed neighbours were engaged in a four-day cross-border conflict.

Their 78-year-old history has fuelled the sporting rivalry, which has – at times – led to tournament boycotts, cancelled matches and ground invasions.

In August, the Indian sport ministry unveiled a new policy barring Indian athletes from travelling to Pakistan for sport competitions, and barring Pakistani athletes from coming to India for bilateral sport events. However, both nations have competed against each other in multilateral sporting events, albeit at neutral venues when the competition is being hosted in either country.

SAFF’s unveiling of the tournament schedule coincides with the anniversary of the Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, which India blames on Pakistan, a claim Pakistan strongly denies.

The tournament, held roughly every two years since the inaugural edition in 2010, was last played in 2024 in Nepal, who lost the final to Bangladesh 2-1.

Pakistan lost its group stage match to India 5-2 and drew against Bangladesh, subsequently failing to qualify for the knockout stage.

Pakistan hosted the 2014 edition of the tournament, where India thrashed Nepal 6-0 to lift the trophy. This will be India’s second time hosting the regional championship after hosting in West Bengal in 2016.

Cricket, which is the most popular sport in both countries, has been at the centre of such travel bans and venue relocations.

In December 2024, the International Cricket Council (ICC) brokered a deal between the two countries to accommodate both governments’ rigid policies. It provided both cricket teams the option of playing at neutral venues when either nation hosted an ICC event.

The latest instance came in February, when Pakistan played all its matches of the men’s T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka, which cohosted the tournament with India.

Earlier in 2025, when Pakistan hosted the ICC Champions Trophy, all of India’s fixtures – including the semifinal and final – were allocated to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

However, unlike the ICC, the global body for field hockey has not implemented neutral venue arrangements for its tournaments. It meant that Pakistan pulled out of the men’s junior World Cup in November, as it was played in two cities in India’s Tamil Nadu state. The Pakistani government said its decision was centred on player safety.

Last August, Pakistan missed the Asia Cup hockey tournament for the first time in its history due to security concerns of the tournament being held in Rajgir, a city in India’s northeastern state of Bihar.