The next Indian Premier League auction will be staged in Abu Dhabi on 16 December, marking the third year in a row that the player market heads offshore. Dubai broke new ground in 2024, Jeddah followed in 2025, and now the caravan moves a little further west along the Gulf.
Franchises have only a couple of days to tidy up their books. By 3 pm IST on 15 November they must confirm who stays, who goes and, in a few cases, who might yet be bartered away. “That deadline always creeps up faster than you think,” one team analyst admitted. Once the retention lists land, the league office will circulate the long list of registered cricketers; the usual trimming exercise then produces the final auction pool.
As ever with a so-called “mini” auction, it will all be wrapped up in a single day, although the weeks before and after are rarely quiet. The trading window that opened once the 2025 season finished will run until seven days before the sale, switch off for the auction itself, then reopen and stay live until roughly a month before the 2026 tournament begins. (The working dates for next season sit between 15 March and 31 May.)
One rule is unchanged: any player bought on 16 December cannot be moved in a later trade.
Four deals are already locked in. The headline move saw Chennai Super Kings bring in India wicketkeeper-batter Sanju Samson, with Rajasthan Royals receiving the all-round pair of Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran in return. A senior Royals official called it “a calculated gamble we’re happy to live with”.
Mumbai Indians were equally busy. They secured Shardul Thakur from Lucknow Super Giants for INR 2 crore and Sherfane Rutherford from Gujarat Titans for INR 2.6 crore. In a separate swap, Lucknow picked up left-arm seamer Arjun Tendulkar at his base price of INR 30 lakh. “Arjun still has a lot of upside,” said an MI insider, “but our bowling plans for next year needed tweaking.”
The auction itself often feels like a sprint, but the groundwork is very much a marathon. By the time the gavel comes down in Abu Dhabi, most decisions will already have been made—only the final figures remain to be revealed.
