Date and city confirmed for IPL 2026 mini-auction
IPL 2026 mini-auction: This will be the third successive year when the IPL auction is being held overseas.
New Delhi: Date and the venue has been confirmed for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 mini-auction. The much-anticipated auction would be held on December 16 in Abu Dhabi, marking a straight third year when the auction is being held overseas.
The 2024 auction, which took lace in Dubai, was the first time that the auction for the cash-rich league was held overseas. The two-day auction in the 2025 season was held in Jeddah in the month of November. Meanwhile, like all mini-auctions, the 2026 edition will also be a day-long exercise, as per a report by ESPNcricinfo.
Release, retain list to be announced by Nov 15
Franchises will have to first sort the list of the players they are willing to release and retain from the previous squads in 2025 by maximum 3PM on November 15, Saturday. Post that, they will be sent a registered pool of players to shortlist and that long list will then be trimmed for the IPL tom finalise the auction pool.
The window for trading, which started after the 2025 season got over, will continue to be there until a week before the mini-auction and then restart to go until a month prior to the start date of the 19th season of the cash-rich tournament. The franchises can't trade a player who will be bought at the 2026 mini-auction.
As of now, there have been four confirmed trades among five IPL franchises. The biggest swap in the history of the tournament has involved five-time champions Chennai Super Kings getting Sanju Samson from the Rajasthan Royals franchise. They have also traded in the all-rounder pair of Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran.
Meanwhile on Thursday, five-time champions Mumbai Indian procured the services of all-rounder Shardul Thakur and Sherfane Rutherford in 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.