How the IPL Auction Works: Mega vs Mini, Purses, RTM & the Rs 18 Crore Cap
IPL Guide · Researched guide · Updated 26 October 2026
The Question
Two auction types: mega auctions rebuild squads every few years; mini-auctions top them up.
The Answer
Each team works inside a fixed salary purse — spend it all and you simply cannot bid.
Two kinds of auction
The IPL runs two kinds of player auction. A mega auction, held every three to four years (most recently in 2025), throws almost every player back into the pool and lets franchises rebuild from a handful of retentions. A mini-auction, held in the years between, is a top-up market: squads stay mostly intact, and teams bid for a small number of released players, replacements and emerging names.
IPL 2027 follows the mini-auction pattern, with the event reported for 16 December 2026 at ITC Grand Goa. Because it closes the current cycle, it is also the last chance for franchises to adjust before the next mega auction resets everything again.
The purse: a hard salary cap
Every franchise operates inside a total salary purse set by the BCCI for each auction cycle. Retentions are deducted from the purse at fixed slab values, auction buys are deducted at their winning bids, and when the money is gone, a team is done — no overdrafts, no exceptions. Purse management is why you will see a franchise sit silent for an hour and then strike twice in ten minutes.
Purse-remaining figures for the 2027 mini-auction are published on our auction hub as franchises confirm their retention and release lists. Until a list is official, the figure stays PENDING — purse maths built on rumoured releases is how bad information spreads every December.
Retentions and the slab system
Before a mega auction, each team may retain a limited number of players at BCCI-set slab prices, with the top slab at Rs 18 crore. Retention is a trade-off: keeping a superstar is safe but expensive, and every retained player removes both money and flexibility. Before mini-auctions there is no retention event as such — squads simply carry over, and teams announce releases to free purse and squad slots.
Releases are where the mini-auction gets its drama. A released former star — a Cameron Green changing hands, a big-name keeper entering the pool — becomes the headline lot that every purse calculation bends around.
Right to Match and how bidding runs
In mega-auction cycles, franchises may hold Right-to-Match (RTM) cards, letting them reclaim a former player by matching the winning bid. RTMs add a bluffing layer: rival teams bid partly to force the original team's hand. On the day itself, players are grouped into sets by role and capped status, marquee sets go first, and an accelerated round at the end clears the unsold pool at speed.
Unsold does not always mean unwanted. Players regularly return in the accelerated round or as injury replacements later — sometimes becoming the season's best-value signings.
The overseas maximum-fee rule
The newest big rule: at mini-auctions, an overseas player's salary is capped at the highest retention slab — Rs 18 crore — even if the winning bid is higher. The difference is paid to the BCCI for player welfare. The rule was introduced after franchises complained that some overseas stars were skipping mega auctions, where prices are disciplined by big pools, to exploit thin mini-auction markets.
Cameron Green's Rs 25.20 crore move to KKR in 2026 is the rule's showcase example: the bid is the overseas record, the salary is Rs 18 crore, and Rs 7.20 crore goes to player welfare. Expect the rule to keep 2027's overseas bidding intense but not absurd.
Squad rules that shape every bid
Squads have minimum and maximum sizes, a cap on overseas players in the squad and a maximum of four overseas players in any playing XI. That structure creates the market's scarcities: Indian wicketkeeper-batters, left-arm pace, and finishers who bowl are chronically over-demanded, which is why Pant (keeper, captain, left-hander) holds the all-time record.
The Impact Player rule adds one more wrinkle: teams now value specialists who might only play half a match, and auction prices for pure death bowlers and pure powerplay hitters have risen accordingly.
A fan's guide to auction day
Follow three things: your team's purse before each set, the overseas slots still open, and which released stars remain unsold as the accelerated round approaches. Our auction hub carries the dated updates — retentions, releases, purse status and completed buys — each item sourced to a franchise or league announcement, with reported-but-unconfirmed items labelled as such.
And remember the auction's oldest lesson: the team that 'wins' December rarely wins May. RCB's back-to-back titles were built on settled cores, not record bids.
A short history of the auction system
The IPL did not borrow its auction from other leagues — it invented the format for cricket in 2008, when eight franchises bid for the world's players in a single room in Mumbai. The first auction's $723.59 million total made global headlines and set the template: salary purse, capped squads, open ascending bids. Mega auctions followed in cycles (2011, 2014, 2018, 2022, 2025), each resetting the league's economics and its record prices.
The system has been tuned constantly: Right-to-Match cards arrived in 2014, retention slabs were repriced, uncapped-player rules were tightened as domestic scouting professionalised, and the overseas maximum-fee cap was added for the 2025 cycle to stop mini-auction market distortion. Every tweak answers a specific abuse or imbalance the previous cycle exposed.
How a player enters the pool
Players register for the auction with a base price, subject to eligibility rules covering international caps, domestic participation and age. The league compiles a long list, franchises submit interest, and a trimmed auction list is published with players grouped into sets — marquee players first, then capped batters, all-rounders, keepers, fast bowlers, spinners, and finally uncapped sets. The set order is strategy: a team desperate for a keeper cannot wait to see prices settle.
Trades run on a separate track before the auction: franchises can swap players or buy contracts for cash in trading windows, which is how Sanju Samson (to CSK), Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran (to RR), Shardul Thakur (to MI) and Mohammed Shami (to LSG) moved in the current cycle without a bid being placed.
Auction-day dynamics fans miss on TV
Television shows the paddle war; the real game is the spreadsheet. Each franchise runs live purse models that price not just the current lot but the shadow cost of losing later lots. A team that overpays early for a marquee name may be forced into uncapped gambles for three remaining slots — the pattern behind several famous auction collapses. Silence is information too: when a team stops bidding at a round figure, rivals can often infer its remaining purse ceiling.
The accelerated round is the purest market of the day: unsold players return at speed, sometimes at their base price, and this is where title-winning depth is often found. Some of the league's best-value signings — players who became regulars for a fraction of marquee fees — changed hands in near-empty rooms at the end of long days.
Worked example: reading the 2027 mini-auction
Take the reported 2027 setup: squads contracted from 2025, releases announced in the weeks before 16 December 2026, purses published per team. A franchise releasing a Rs 10 crore player does not gain Rs 10 crore of simple spending power — it also reopens a squad slot and possibly an overseas slot, changing which sets it can bid in. Green's situation at KKR shows the overseas cap's effect: his Rs 25.20 crore bid cost KKR Rs 18 crore of real salary space, with the rest leaving the system to the BCCI.
Our auction hub mirrors this structure: purse status per team (PENDING until official), retained and released lists as they are announced, and completed buys with prices — so on auction day you can read the room the way the franchises do.
Base prices and the psychology of the first bid
Every player enters with a base price — the reserve below which bidding cannot start. Marquee players set high bases to signal status; smart younger players set low bases to invite competition, because a Rs 20 lakh base with five bidders regularly finishes above a Rs 2 crore base with one. Agents understand this: the base price is marketing, not valuation. Some of the auction's most famous bargains began with deliberately modest bases that turned a room full of analysts into competitors.
Franchises counter with discipline tools: walk-away numbers set before the event, role-based budget envelopes, and 'shadow squads' showing what the XI looks like if each lot is won or lost. The teams that look calm on television are usually the ones whose models decided the bid limits weeks earlier — the paddle is theatre; the spreadsheet is the auction.
What happens to unsold players
Unsold at the main auction is not the end. Players return in the accelerated round the same day; those still unsold can be signed later as replacement players when injuries strike — a route that has produced genuine starters, because a mid-season replacement joins a defined role rather than a hypothetical one. Replacement signings are priced within the purse rules and announced by franchises as they happen, which is why our auction hub stays live as a reference long after auction day.
For young domestic players, going unsold is data, not doom: franchises log every name they scouted, and a strong domestic season converts directly into next cycle's interest. Prashant Veer's rise to a Rs 14.20 crore uncapped record began in exactly that scouting pipeline.
Glossary: auction words in plain English
Purse: the total salary budget a team can spend. Retention: keeping a contracted player before an auction, at a slab price. Release: letting a player go, freeing his salary and slot. Base price: a player's reserve price in the pool. Right-to-Match: a card letting a team reclaim its former player by matching the winning bid. Accelerated round: the fast final round where unsold players are offered again. Maximum-fee rule: the Rs 18 crore salary cap on overseas players at mini-auctions. Marquee set: the star players auctioned first.
With those eight terms, you can follow any auction broadcast, any purse table and any argument about December 2026 — including every page of our auction hub, which uses exactly this vocabulary and nothing fancier.
Sources and where to verify this yourself
The rules summarised here — retention slabs, the overseas maximum-fee cap, squad and playing-XI limits — follow the BCCI's published auction framework as reported by ESPNcricinfo and the major Indian sports press, with the 2008 auction totals from the league's founding records. Keep exploring: the auction hub applies these rules to the 2027 mini-auction team by team, and the most-expensive-player guide shows the prices the system has produced.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a mega auction and a mini-auction?
A mega auction (every 3–4 years, last in 2025) returns almost all players to the pool for full squad rebuilds. A mini-auction tops up existing squads with released and new players — IPL 2027 has a mini-auction.
What is the IPL overseas salary cap at mini-auctions?
Rs 18 crore — the highest retention slab. If bidding exceeds it, the player still receives Rs 18 crore and the surplus goes to the BCCI for player welfare.
When and where is the IPL 2027 auction?
It is reported for 16 December 2026 at ITC Grand Goa, the first IPL auction in India since 2022. Official BCCI confirmation is pending.
How many overseas players can an IPL team play?
A maximum of four overseas players in a playing XI, within a squad that also has an overall overseas limit set by the league.