Ten franchises, ten home grounds, and a set of venues whose characteristics shape the tournament more than most people credit. A match at Chinnaswamy and a match at Chepauk are close to different sports.
This is a reference page: every current IPL team, its home stadium and city, what each ground is known for, and the title history that sits behind them. Purely editorial — no odds, tips or predictions here or anywhere else on this site.
All 10 teams and their home grounds
| Team | City | State | Home stadium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chennai Super Kings | Chennai | Tamil Nadu | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium (Chepauk) |
| Delhi Capitals | New Delhi | Delhi | Arun Jaitley Stadium |
| Gujarat Titans | Ahmedabad | Gujarat | Narendra Modi Stadium |
| Kolkata Knight Riders | Kolkata | West Bengal | Eden Gardens |
| Lucknow Super Giants | Lucknow | Uttar Pradesh | Ekana Stadium |
| Mumbai Indians | Mumbai | Maharashtra | Wankhede Stadium |
| Punjab Kings | New Chandigarh | Punjab | Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium |
| Rajasthan Royals | Jaipur | Rajasthan | Sawai Mansingh Stadium |
| Royal Challengers Bengaluru | Bengaluru | Karnataka | M. Chinnaswamy Stadium |
| Sunrisers Hyderabad | Hyderabad | Telangana | Rajiv Gandhi Stadium |
Two entries usually need explaining. Royal Challengers Bengaluru is the same franchise formerly branded Bangalore — the name changed with the city’s official spelling, not through any sale. And Punjab Kings now play at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium in New Chandigarh, having moved from the long-standing Mohali ground; the franchise has also historically split home matches with Dharamsala.
The 2026 season
The most recent completed season ran from 28 March to 31 May 2026.
| 2026 | |
|---|---|
| Champions | Royal Challengers Bengaluru |
| Runners-up | Gujarat Titans |
| Final | 31 May 2026, Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad |
| Result | RCB won by 5 wickets |
| Scores | GT 155/8; RCB 161/5 in 18 overs |
| Key innings | Virat Kohli 75 not out off 42 |
| Most Valuable Player | Vaibhav Sooryavanshi (Rajasthan Royals) |
| Orange Cap (most runs) | Vaibhav Sooryavanshi — 776 |
| Purple Cap (most wickets) | Kagiso Rabada (Gujarat Titans) — 29 |
Sooryavanshi taking both the Orange Cap and the MVP award from a side that did not reach the final is a rare combination, and 776 runs is a substantial season by any measure.
The result carried a distinction the table above does not show: Royal Challengers Bengaluru were defending the title, having won in 2025, which makes them only the third franchise ever to retain it. Chennai Super Kings did it in 2010 and 2011, and Mumbai Indians in 2019 and 2020 — nobody else has managed it in the competition’s history.
The final itself was a low-scoring one by modern IPL standards. Gujarat Titans were held to 155/8, and Royal Challengers chased it down in 18 overs with Virat Kohli unbeaten on 75 from 42 balls — a controlled chase rather than a dramatic one.
Title history
Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians remain the most successful franchises, with five titles each. Between them they have dominated the tournament’s history to a degree no other side has approached.
The contrast in how they got there is part of what makes the rivalry interesting. Mumbai’s titles came through a run of finals in a relatively compressed period; Chennai’s are spread across a much longer stretch, including seasons either side of a two-year suspension. Different routes, same total.
What each ground is known for
Venue character genuinely matters in a format this short, and the differences between IPL grounds are unusually pronounced.
| Ground | Generally known for |
|---|---|
| M. Chinnaswamy, Bengaluru | Short boundaries and high scoring; among the most batting-friendly |
| M. A. Chidambaram, Chennai | Slow, gripping surfaces where spin is central |
| Wankhede, Mumbai | Good carry and pace; sea breeze can assist swing in the evening |
| Eden Gardens, Kolkata | Large capacity, generally good batting, some turn later on |
| Narendra Modi, Ahmedabad | The largest capacity in world cricket; used for finals |
| Arun Jaitley, Delhi | Historically high-scoring with short square boundaries |
| Ekana, Lucknow | Slower surfaces than most; often lower-scoring |
| Sawai Mansingh, Jaipur | Traditionally offers something to spin |
| Rajiv Gandhi, Hyderabad | Good batting surface with pace and bounce |
| Maharaja Yadavindra Singh, New Chandigarh | Newer venue, still establishing its character |
These are general reputations built over many seasons, not statements about how any individual match will play. Pitches are re-laid, curators change, and a ground’s reputation can lag several years behind its actual behaviour — Chepauk in particular has produced seasons that did not match its billing at all.
Why home advantage is smaller than it looks
The IPL is often described as a tournament where knowing your conditions decides seasons. The reality is more qualified, and worth understanding.
- Squads are assembled by auction, so a team’s personnel may not suit its own ground at all.
- Overseas players rotate through availability windows, changing a side’s balance mid-season.
- Neutral venues appear regularly — playoffs, finals and occasional relocations for scheduling or elections.
- Pitches are prepared to a tournament standard, limiting how far a curator can tailor a surface.
- Opposition analysts know the grounds too. There is no informational secret about a venue used every season.
- Some franchises split home matches across two grounds, diluting familiarity.
Home advantage is real but modest, and it is smaller than the way commentary tends to frame it.
Season structure
The tournament has settled into a recognisable shape with ten teams.
- League stage — each team plays 14 matches.
- Qualifier 1 — the top two sides meet; the winner goes straight to the final.
- Eliminator — third and fourth; the loser is out.
- Qualifier 2 — the Qualifier 1 loser plays the Eliminator winner.
- Final — usually staged at a major venue, as at Ahmedabad in 2026.
The structure gives the top two a genuine advantage: finishing first or second means a second chance after a defeat, while third and fourth must win every knockout match. That is a real reward for league consistency, and it is why the closing weeks of the league stage are frequently more consequential than the opening weeks of the playoffs.
A note on the calendar
The IPL traditionally occupies a window from late March through to the end of May, as it did in 2026. That places it in the Indian summer, which is part of why evening starts dominate the schedule and why dew becomes a factor in the second innings at several venues.
Exact dates for future seasons are confirmed by the BCCI closer to the time and are subject to the international calendar, so we do not list unconfirmed ones here. When the next season’s fixtures are published, our IPL page is where we cover them.
In short
Ten franchises, ten home grounds, spread from Chennai to New Chandigarh. Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians lead the honours with five titles each. Royal Challengers Bengaluru won the 2026 season, beating Gujarat Titans by 5 wickets at the Narendra Modi Stadium on 31 May 2026, with Vaibhav Sooryavanshi taking Player of the Tournament and 776 runs.
Venue character varies enormously — Chinnaswamy and Chepauk sit at opposite ends of what a T20 pitch can be — but home advantage is more limited than commentary suggests, because auction-built squads do not necessarily suit their own conditions. For more on following the tournament, see our IPL page and cricket betting ID page.
How the squads are actually built
The venues are only half the story. The other half is that IPL squads are assembled through a mechanism unlike anything in most sports, and it explains a great deal about why teams look the way they do.
Franchises retain a limited number of players between cycles and rebuild the rest through auction, bidding against each other under a salary cap. Every few years a mega auction resets most squads almost entirely, while the intervening years use smaller auctions for adjustments.
- A salary cap limits total squad spend, so signing one expensive player constrains the rest of the build.
- Retentions let a franchise keep continuity, but each retention costs against the cap.
- The Right to Match card, where in use, allows a team to match a winning bid for a former player.
- A cap on overseas players in the XI means depth in Indian players is structurally essential.
- Uncapped Indian players are comparatively cheap, which is why domestic form has real auction value.
- Injury replacements can be signed mid-season, sometimes changing a squad’s balance considerably.
The constraint that shapes everything is the limit on overseas players in the playing eleven. It means no franchise can simply buy an international side; a team is only as good as the Indian players around its overseas stars. That is why the domestic competitions genuinely matter, and why an uncapped player having a strong season can change a franchise’s plans.
Why the auction undermines home advantage
This is worth drawing out, because it connects directly to the venue section above.
In most sports, a club recruits with its own stadium in mind over many years. In the IPL a franchise competes at auction against nine others for a shared pool, under a cap, in a room where its preferences are visible. A team whose ground rewards spin cannot reliably assemble a spin-heavy attack, because the players it wants may simply be bid away.
The result is that squads and grounds are often mismatched. A side playing at a short-boundary venue may end up with a seam-heavy attack; a team on a slow surface may be built around power hitting. That mismatch is not incompetence — it is the auction working as designed, and it is the main reason home advantage in the IPL is weaker than the commentary around it suggests.
The Impact Player rule
The most significant recent change to how a match is played is the substitute rule allowing a team to bring in a player mid-match in place of another.
Its effect on team-building has been more interesting than its effect on any individual game. It lets a side field an extra specialist — effectively an additional batter or an additional bowler depending on the situation — which reduces the premium on genuine all-rounders. That has been a point of open debate within the game, with the argument being that a rule intended to add tactical interest may be discouraging the development of exactly the player type Indian cricket has historically found hardest to produce.
Whether that concern is borne out is a longer-term question. What is not in doubt is that squads are now built with the rule in mind, so it shapes auction strategy as much as match tactics.
Following the tournament sensibly
- Fixtures are confirmed by the BCCI closer to each season — treat earlier reports as provisional.
- Venues occasionally change for elections, weather or ground readiness; this happens most seasons.
- Most matches are evening starts, with a smaller number of afternoon fixtures at weekends.
- Dew is a genuine factor in the second innings at several venues, and it affects how the game plays.
- Overseas availability shifts mid-season around international commitments.
- The league stage matters more than it looks — finishing in the top two gives a second life in the playoffs.
The franchises that no longer exist
Ten teams compete now, but the IPL has not always had these ten, and the gaps in the history explain some of the odder details in the record books.
- Deccan Chargers — the Hyderabad franchise that won a title before being terminated; Sunrisers Hyderabad later took the city’s place as a separate franchise.
- Kochi Tuskers Kerala — competed for a single season before its contract was terminated.
- Pune Warriors India — competed for several seasons before withdrawing.
- Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions — two temporary franchises that filled in during a two-year period when Chennai and Rajasthan were suspended.
- Gujarat Titans — a later, separate Ahmedabad franchise, not a continuation of Gujarat Lions.
The two-year gap in the middle of Chennai’s history is the detail that confuses people looking at title counts. Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals were both suspended for two seasons, which is why Chennai’s five titles are spread across a longer period than Mumbai’s, and why two franchises briefly existed that have no continuity with anything currently in the league.
Reading the points table
The league stage table uses conventions that are worth knowing, particularly the tie-breaker.
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Mat | Matches played — 14 in the league stage |
| W / L | Wins and losses |
| NR | No result, usually rain; points are shared |
| Pts | Two points for a win, one for a no result |
| NRR | Net run rate — the primary tie-breaker |
Net run rate is the part that decides seasons. It compares the rate a team scores at across the tournament against the rate it concedes, and when sides finish level on points it separates them. Because it accumulates all season, a single heavy defeat early on can still be deciding a playoff place in May — which is why teams chase targets faster than they strictly need to, and why the margin of a dead-rubber win occasionally matters a great deal.
It is also why the final weekend of the league stage regularly produces scenarios where several teams can still qualify depending on margins rather than results alone.
Franchise scouting still leans heavily on red-ball form — our Ranji Trophy 2026-27 guide covers the competition where most IPL squad members first made their name.
Most uncapped players in an IPL squad were scouted in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2026-27, India’s national T20 competition for state sides.
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