IPL auction set to take place on December 16 in Abu Dhabi

The 2026 IPL auction will take place on December 16 in Abu Dhabi. This will be the third successive year when the IPL auction is being held overseas. The 2024 auction in Dubai was the first time it was held overseas. The two-day mega auction for the 2025 season was held in Jeddah in November 2024.

Like all mini auctions, the 2026 edition, too, will be a day-long exercise. Franchises have to first sort the list of players they want to release and retain from their 2025 squads, by 3pm IST on November 15. After that they will be sent a registered pool of players to shortlist. That long list will then be pruned for IPL to finalise the auction pool.

The trading window, which opened after the 2025 season, will continue until a week before the auction and then resume to go on until a month prior to the IPL start date in 2026. The 10 franchises cannot trade a player who will be bought at the 2026 auction.

So far there have been four confirmed trades among five teams. That includes the most high-profile player swap in IPL history which involved five-time champions Chennai Super Kings (CSK) getting Indian wicketkeeper-batter Sanju Samson from Rajasthan Royals, who have traded in the allrounder pair of Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran.

On Thursday, Mumbai Indians, also five-time champions, procured India allrounder Shardul Thakur and Sherfane Rutherford in all-cash deals from Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) for INR 2 crore and Gujarat Titans (GT) for INR 2.60 crore, respectively. In a separate trade, LSG got Arjun Tendulkar at his base price of INR 30 lakh from MI.

The tentative window for IPL 2026 is March 15 to May 31.