2025 Indian Premier League

2025 Indian Premier League

Dates	14 March – 25 May 2025
Administrator(s)	Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)
Cricket format	Twenty20
Tournament format(s)	Group stage and Playoffs
Host(s)	India
Participants	10
Matches	74
Official website	iplt20.com
← 2024 2026 →

The 2025 Indian Premier League (also known as IPL 18 and branded as TATA IPL 2025) will be the 18th edition of the Indian Premier League, a franchise Twenty20 cricket league held in India, organized by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The tournament will feature ten teams competing in 74 matches from 14 March to 25 May 2025.

Kolkata Knight Riders are the defending champions, having won their third title in the previous season after beating Sunrisers Hyderabad in the final.^[1]

This will be the first edition following the unanimous appointment of Jay Shah, the current secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), as the chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC). He will begin his term in December 2024.^[2][3] V. Chamundeswaranath and CM Sane are the representatives of the Indian Cricketers' Association (ICA) and Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) nominee respectively.^[4] Arun Singh Dhumal and Avishek Dalmiya will continue serving as the chairman and treasurer of the league till this edition.^[5]

Each team will be playing twice against the teams in their group, against the team in the same row in the other group, and once against the remaining four teams in the other group. After the group stage, the top four teams based on aggregate points will qualify for the playoffs. In this stage, the top two teams compete with each other (in a match titled "Qualifier 1"), as do the remaining two teams (in a match titled "Eliminator"). While the winner of Qualifier 1 directly qualifies for the final match, the losing team has another chance to qualify for the final match by competing against the winning team of the Eliminator match (in a match titled "Qualifier 2"). The winner of this subsequent Qualifier 2 match will move on to the final match. The team that wins the final match will be crowned the Indian Premier League winners.^[6][7] Seedings for the group stage are yet to be announced.

According to ESPN Cricinfo, the dates of the tournament window for the next three seasons (2025-27) have been sent to the respective franchises.^[8] The 2025 edition will begin on 14 March 2025, with the final scheduled for 25 May 2025. The IPL Governing Council decided to keep the number of matches to 74 for this edition as it was in the previous three seasons to help the cricketers balance their workload.^[9] The number of matches for the next two seasons will be increased to 84. The 2026 edition is scheduled to take place from March 15, 2026, to May 31, 2026, while the 2027 edition will be held from May 14, 2027, to May 30, 2027.^[10][11]

This will be the first IPL edition to be broadcast after the completion of the merger between the Reliance Industries and Bodhi Tree Systems-backed Viacom18 and the Walt Disney Company's subsidiary Star India. The new entity formed from this merger has been named JioStar.^[12][13] Star India's Star Sports and Viacom18's JioCinema had acquired the satellite and digital broadcasting rights of IPL 2023 to 2027 respectively.^[14] Following the merger, both assets are owned by JioStar and JioCinema is to be shut down in favour of Disney+ Hotstar.^[15] Disney+ Hotstar previously held the digital broadcasting rights of IPL from 2018 to 2022.^[16]

The same 10 teams from the previous season are set to return.

Teams summary for the 2025 IPL

Group	Team	Last year performance	Head coach	Captain
TBA	Chennai Super Kings	5th	Stephen Fleming	Ruturaj Gaikwad
	Delhi Capitals	6th	Hemang Badani	TBA
	Gujarat Titans	8th	Ashish Nehra	Shubman Gill
	Kolkata Knight Riders	Champions	Chandrakant Pandit	TBA
	Lucknow Super Giants	7th	Justin Langer	TBA
	Mumbai Indians	10th	Mahela Jayawardene	Hardik Pandya
	Punjab Kings	9th	Ricky Ponting	TBA
	Rajasthan Royals	3rd	Rahul Dravid	Sanju Samson
	Royal Challengers Bengaluru	4th	Andy Flower	TBA
	Sunrisers Hyderabad	Runner-up	Daniel Vettori	Pat Cummins

The following players were retained or signed by their respective teams for the tournament.^[17]

The Indian Premier League retention took place on 31 October 2024.^[18] The teams have retained a total of 46 players, investing a cumulative ₹558.5 crore (US$67 million).^[19] Heinrich Klaasen became the most expensive retained player in IPL history for a whooping ₹23 crore (US$2.8 million), while Virat Kohli became the most expensive retained Indian player for ₹21 crore (US$2.5 million) respectively.^[20] Punjab Kings will enter the Mega Auction with ₹110.5 crore (US$13 million), the highest-ever purse in IPL history for any team.^[21]

The BCCI announced the player auction list on 5 November 2024,^[22] with the detailed player list being announced on 15 November 2024.^[23] The Mega auction will be held on 24 and 25 November respectively in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It will be held overseas for the second successive year, after Dubai, UAE hosting the previous year's auction.^[24][25]A record-breaking 1,574 players have registered for the upcoming Mega Auction, marking the highest number ever recorded. Out of these, only 574 players have been shortlisted.^[26][27]

Support staff changes ahead of 2025 IPL

Team	Position	Outgoing	Incoming	Ref.
Delhi Capitals	Head Coach	Ricky Ponting	Hemang Badani	[28]
	Director of Cricket	Sourav Ganguly	Venugopal Rao
	Bowling Coach	James Hopes	Munaf Patel	[29]
Gujarat Titans	Batting and Assistant Coach	Gary Kirsten	Parthiv Patel	[30]
Kolkata Knight Riders	Mentor	Gautam Gambhir	Dwayne Bravo	[31]
Lucknow Super Giants	Mentor	—	Zaheer Khan	[32]
Mumbai Indians	Head Coach	Mark Boucher	Mahela Jayawardene	[33]
	Bowling Coach	Lasith Malinga	Paras Mhambrey	[34]
Punjab Kings	Head Coach	Trevor Bayliss	Ricky Ponting	[35]
Rajasthan Royals	Head Coach	Kumar Sangakkara	Rahul Dravid	[36]
	Batting Coach	Trevor Penney	Vikram Rathour	[37]
Royal Challengers Bengaluru	Batting Coach and Mentor	—	Dinesh Karthik	[38]
	Bowling Coach	Adam Griffith	Omkar Salvi	[39]

Captaincy changes ahead of the 2025 IPL

Team	Outgoing	Incoming	Ref.
Delhi Capitals	Rishabh Pant	TBA	[40]
Kolkata Knight Riders	Shreyas Iyer	TBA	[41]
Lucknow Super Giants	KL Rahul	TBA	[42]
Punjab Kings	Shikhar Dhawan	TBA	[43]
Royal Challengers Bengaluru	Faf du Plessis	TBA	[44]

The IPL governing council announced the Mega Player Auction rules on 28 September after a meeting with the owners of the 10 franchises in July at the BCCI Headquarters.^[45][46] The IPL franchises can retain a total of 6 players from their existing squad. This can be either via retention or by using the Right to Match (RTM) option, the highest retention capacity ever.^[47] The auction purse for the franchises has been set at ₹120 crore (US$14 million) for IPL 2025.^[48] Each Playing member (Including the Impact Player) will get an additional match fee of ₹7.5 lakh (US$9,000) per match.^[49] Any player who registers in the player auction and after getting picked at the auction, makes himself unavailable before the start of the season, will get banned from participating in the tournament and player auction for 2 Seasons.^[50] A capped Indian player will become uncapped if the player has in the last five calendar years preceding the year in which the relevant Season is held, not played in the starting XI in International Cricket (Test match, ODI, Twenty20 International) or does not have a Central Contract with BCCI. The Impact Player Regulation will continue for the 2025 to 2027 cycle.^[51]

• Official website
• Tournament home at ESPNcricinfo