It is deadline day in the Indian Premier League (IPL) as each of the ten franchises make the big decision of which players to retain ahead of the IPL 2026 mini-auction scheduled in December. While a few major trade updates and player release news were already out before the official announcements, the complete picture was derived only after each franchise gave their respective public statements.
As the next auction is a mini auction, there isn't a cap on how many players to retain or release. It totally depends on what each franchise has in mind about their squad construction for the next two seasons and beyond. After months of speculation, here is the final list of retained players for each franchise
Chennai Super Kings
Ruturaj Gaikwad (c), Ayush Mhatre, Dewald Brevis, MS Dhoni, Urvil Patel, Sanju Samson (trade), Shivam Dube, Jamie Overton, Ramakrishna Ghosh, Noor Ahmad, Khaleel Ahmed, Anshul Kamboj, Gurjapneet Singh, Nathan Ellis, Shreyas Gopal, Mukesh Choudhary
Mumbai Indians
Hardik Pandya(c), Naman Dhir, Mitchell Santner, Will Jacks, Corbin Bosch, Raj Bawa, Robin Minz, Ryan Rickelton, Rohit Sharma, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav, Sherfane Rutherford, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah, Deepak Chahar, Ashwani Kumar, Raghu Sharma, Allah Ghazanfar
Kolkata Knight Riders
Ajinkya Rahane(c), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Varun Chakaravarthy, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Umran Malik
Royal Challengers Bengaluru
Rajat Patidar(c), Virat Kohli, Tim David, Devdutt Padikkal, Phil Salt, Jitesh Sharma, Krunal Pandya, Jacob Bethell, Romario Shepherd, Swapnil Singh, Josh Hazlewood, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rasikh Salam, Yash Dayal, Suyash Sharma, Nuwan Thushara, Abhinandan Singh
Lucknow Super Giants
Rishabh Pant(c), Nicholas Pooran, Abdul Samad, Ayush Badoni, Aiden Markram, Matthew Breetzke, Himmat Singh, Mitchell Marsh, Shahbaz Ahmed, Arshin Kulkarni, Arjun Tendulkar, Mohammed Shami, Mayank Yadav, Avesh Khan, Mohsin Khan, M Siddarth, Digvesh Rathi, Prince Yadav, Akash Singh,
SunRisers Hyderabad
Pat Cummins(c), Jaydev Unadkat, Eshan Malinga, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Aniket Verma, Ravichandran Smaran, Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, Zeeshan Ansari, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harsh Dubey, Kamindu Mendis, Harshal Patel, Brydon Carse
Gujarat Titans
Shubman Gill (c), Sai Sudharsan, Kumar Kushagra, Anuj Rawat, Jos Buttler, Nishant Sindhu, Washington Sundar, Arshad Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Rahul Tewatia, Kagiso Rabada, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Ishant Sharma, Gurnoor Singh Brar, Rashid Khan, Manav Suthar, Sai Kishore, Jayant Yadav
Delhi Capitals
Axar Patel (c), Ashutosh Sharma, Vipraj Nigam, Madhav Tiwari, Tripurana Vijay, Tristan Stubbs, Sameer Rizvi, Karun Nair, KL Rahul, Abishek Porel, Ajay Mandal, Kuldeep Yadav, Mitchell Starc, T Natarajan, Mukesh Kumar, Dushmantha Chameera
Rajasthan Royals
Yashasvi Jaiswal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel, Ravindra Jadeja, Shimron Hetmyer, Shubham Dubey, Lhuan Dre-Pretorius, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Sam Curran, Donovan Ferreira, Jofra Archer, Tushar Deshpande, Sandeep Sharma, Yudhvir Singh, Kwena Maphaka, Nandre Burger,
Punjab Kings
Shreyas Iyer(c), Nehal Wadhera, Priyansh Arya, Shashank Singh, Pyla Avinash, Harnoor Pannu, Musheer Khan, Prabhsimran Singh, Vishnu Vinod, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Azmatullah Omarzai, Suryansh Shedge, Mitchell Owen, Arshdeep Singh, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Yash Thakur, Xavier Bartlett, Lockie Ferguson, Yuzvendra Chahal, Harpreet Brar