Who Won IPL 2025 and 2026? Finals, Scores & the RCB Story

IPL Guide · Researched guide · Updated 26 October 2026

The answer, up front

Royal Challengers Bengaluru won IPL 2025 and Royal Challengers Bengaluru won IPL 2026. Two seasons, two finals, two wins in Ahmedabad — and one of the great redemption stories in sport. If you only remember one line: the franchise that waited 18 years for a first trophy immediately won a second one twelve months later.

This page walks through both finals, what made them different, and where RCB's double sits in the league's wider history of champions from 2008 to today.

IPL 2025 final: the 18-year wait ends

For seventeen seasons RCB were the league's nearly team: three lost finals (2009, 2011, 2016), superstar squads, and a fan base that turned 'this year is our year' into a running joke. In 2025, under captain Rajat Patidar, they finally finished the job, beating Punjab Kings by six runs in the final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Six runs is a tight margin for a T20 final, and it captured the season: RCB were not the most glamorous side in 2025, but they were the most complete — a settled bowling attack, contributions from the whole order, and Virat Kohli, the one-club man who had lived through every failure, top-scoring in the final with 43 on the biggest night of his IPL life.

IPL 2026 final: defence of the crown

Defending a title is supposed to be harder than winning one. RCB made it look methodical. They topped the league stage for the first time in franchise history (9 wins, 18 points, net run rate +0.783), hammered Gujarat Titans by 92 runs in Qualifier 1 at Dharamsala, then met the same opponents in the final on 31 May 2026 — again in Ahmedabad.

Gujarat posted 155/8. RCB chased it down as 161/5 in 18 overs to win by five wickets, with Kohli producing a monumental unbeaten 75 off 42 balls. It was the knock of a man who had stopped chasing the trophy and started owning it.

Only the third team to go back-to-back

Back-to-back titles are rare air in the IPL. Before RCB, only Chennai Super Kings (2010–2011) and Mumbai Indians (2019–2020) had defended the championship. Plenty of great sides won once and faded; sustaining a title across two auction cycles, injuries and form swings is the hardest trick in franchise cricket.

The full champions list shows how concentrated success has been: eight different winners across 19 seasons, with CSK and MI on five titles each and KKR on three. RCB's two titles in two years moved them from the league's most famous underachievers to its current standard-setters in one sweep.

The other recent finals, for context

Kolkata Knight Riders won IPL 2024, beating Sunrisers Hyderabad in Chennai for their third title. Chennai Super Kings won 2023, defeating Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad for a fifth crown. Gujarat themselves had the dream start — champions in their debut season in 2022, beating Rajasthan Royals, a feat no other expansion side has matched.

Notice the pattern: Ahmedabad keeps hosting finals (2022, 2023, 2025, 2026), and the same small group of franchises keeps reaching them. The league's competitive balance is real across the table — Delhi, Punjab and Lucknow have all knocked on the door — but finals remain the property of a few battle-hardened organisations.

What it means for IPL 2027

Every storyline in 2027 starts with Bengaluru. A three-peat has never been done. RCB's squad continuity is their weapon: Patidar captaining, Kohli anchoring, and a bowling group that delivered in two straight finals. The December 2026 mini-auction is where rivals try to close the gap — CSK have already traded in Sanju Samson, and KKR spent a record Rs 25.20 crore on Cameron Green in the 2026 auction cycle.

Punjab Kings, runners-up in 2025, and Gujarat, runners-up in 2026, both know how close they are. The 2027 season, running 10 March to 15 May on the BCCI's target window, will be framed as one question: who stops RCB?

Finals FAQ-style quick facts

Both recent finals were played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, the world's largest cricket ground at 132,000 capacity. The 2025 final margin was six runs; the 2026 final margin was five wickets with twelve balls to spare. Rajat Patidar captained both wins, making him a two-time title-winning captain while still in the early part of his career.

For the complete season-by-season list — every winner, runner-up and final venue from Rajasthan Royals in 2008 to RCB in 2026 — use the history section of this site, and the records section for the individual marks set along the way.

The road to the 2025 final

RCB's 2025 title is sometimes misremembered as a one-night miracle. It was a season-long build: a settled XI, a bowling attack that defended low totals, and a captain in Rajat Patidar who made calm decisions in loud moments. Punjab Kings, their final opponents, had their own fairytale — Shreyas Iyer, bought for Rs 26.75 crore, captained them to the final in his first season — and the six-run margin in Ahmedabad reflected how little separated the league's best two sides that year.

For Kohli, the night closed a loop that began in 2008: the only player to represent one franchise in every IPL season finally had the trophy. His 43 in the final was not his biggest innings, but it was his most valuable, played at the tempo the surface demanded on the night.

The road to the 2026 final

The 2026 season tested RCB differently: everyone hunted the champions. They answered by topping the league stage for the first time in their history — nine wins, 18 points, and a net run rate of +0.783 built on heavy wins like the 92-run Qualifier 1 demolition of Gujarat Titans at Dharamsala days before the final. Gujarat's own run was built on Kagiso Rabada's Purple Cap season (29 wickets) and a top order that kept posting defendable totals.

The final itself, on 31 May 2026, was a chase masterclass. Gujarat's 155/8 always looked slightly under par on an Ahmedabad surface, and Kohli's unbeaten 75 off 42 balls removed the jeopardy early. RCB reached 161/5 in 18 overs — a five-wicket win with two full overs unused, in a final, against the season's best bowling attack.

Where the double sits in IPL history

Nineteen seasons have produced eight champions, and concentration at the top is the league's defining statistic: CSK and MI own five titles each, KKR three, and now RCB two — meaning 15 of 19 championships sit with four franchises. Back-to-back defences are rarer still: CSK 2010–11, MI 2019–20, RCB 2025–26. Each double had a different flavour — CSK's was built on retention-era continuity, MI's on a powerhouse squad at its peak, RCB's on finally fixing the bowling that had betrayed them for a decade.

The flip side is the league's most persistent heartbreak list: Delhi Capitals, Punjab Kings and Lucknow Super Giants have never won it, and Punjab have now lost two finals (2014 and 2025). History says the door does eventually open — it opened for RCB after 18 years — but it opens for organisations, not for one-season projects.

The finals RCB lost, and why they matter to the story

To understand 2025, remember 2009 (lost to Deccan Chargers in Johannesburg), 2011 (lost to CSK in Chennai) and 2016 (lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad in Bengaluru, in the season of Kohli's 973 runs). Three finals, three defeats, each with a different cast around the same central figure. That scar tissue is precisely why the back-to-back carries weight: this was not a talented team getting hot once, but a franchise that rebuilt its identity — scouting, bowling depth, role clarity — until the result changed.

It also sharpens the 2027 question. Three-peats require beating history itself: no IPL side has done it, and the mini-auction system is designed to pull champions back toward the pack. Whether RCB's core survives December intact is the first chapter of the 2027 season.

The captains: Patidar's unlikely place in history

Rajat Patidar was not supposed to be a two-time IPL-winning captain. He was an injury replacement signing in 2022, a middle-order batter who became captain almost by accident of squad construction — and now sits in a club with MS Dhoni (five titles as CSK captain) and Rohit Sharma (five as MI captain) as a multi-title skipper. His back-to-back was built on the league's least glamorous virtues: stable selections, defensive fields that trusted his bowlers, and calm use of the Impact Player.

Opposite numbers tell the story too. Shreyas Iyer has now captained two different franchises to finals (KKR's 2024 title and PBKS's 2025 runner-up finish) and remains the most tactically rated Indian captain of his generation, while Shubman Gill's Gujarat reached the 2026 final in his build-a-core project. The 2027 captaincy map — Patidar defending, Iyer and Gill chasing, Samson beginning at CSK — is as compelling as any player storyline.

What the two finals did to the league's economics

Championship runs compound. RCB's double has strengthened the franchise's already enormous commercial position — they were the league's most-followed team long before they were its most successful — and title-winning cores raise every associated value: sponsorship, ticket demand, and the auction prices of the players involved. Expect RCB squad members entering future auctions to carry a quiet 'proven winner' premium that analysts mock and franchises reliably pay.

There is a competitive-balance counterweight: the mini-auction system and the purse structure exist to drag winners back toward the field. RCB's challenge in December 2026 is retention maths, not talent identification. If they keep the core, 2027 starts with a favourite. If the purse forces a hard release, the three-peat story changes overnight — and the updates feed will carry it first.

The answer card: both finals at a glance

IPL 2025 — Winners: Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Runners-up: Punjab Kings. Margin: six runs. Venue: Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad. IPL 2026 — Winners: Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Runners-up: Gujarat Titans. Scores: GT 155/8, RCB 161/5 in 18 overs. Margin: five wickets. Date: 31 May 2026. Venue: Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad. Player of the final innings: Virat Kohli, 75 not out off 42 balls.

Keep those two cards and you can answer the two most-asked IPL questions of the year in under ten seconds. For every other season — 2008 to 2024 — the history section carries the same card format, season by season.

Sources and where to verify this yourself

The champions list, final venues and margins in this guide are drawn from the IPL winners tables published by Wikipedia and specialist records sites, cross-checked against final-match reporting from ESPNcricinfo and NDTV Sports, including the 2026 final scorecard details (GT 155/8; RCB 161/5 in 18 overs on 31 May 2026). Keep exploring: our history section carries a page for every season from 2008, and the records hub carries the individual marks those seasons produced.

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