The Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) is India’s premier professional kabaddi competition and the second most-watched sports league in India after the IPL. Season 13 is next up on the calendar, expected to run through the winter 2026-27 window. This is an editorial guide to the league – the 12 franchises, the format, the venues and how to follow it – with no tips, odds or predictions.
Important: as of writing, exact Season 13 dates and the full schedule are still to be confirmed by Mashal Sports. Everything below is either historically consistent or clearly flagged as tentative; always confirm on the official ProKabaddi.com schedule.
Key facts at a glance
| Detail | Pro Kabaddi League Season 13 |
|---|---|
| Competition | Pro Kabaddi League – top tier of Indian professional kabaddi |
| Season | Season 13 – dates subject to official confirmation |
| Franchises | 12 city-based teams |
| Format | League phase (round-robin), followed by playoffs and a final |
| Defending champions | Dabang Delhi K.C. (2025 champions – their 2nd title) |
| Broadcast in India | Star Sports (broadcast partner since the league’s launch in 2014) |
| Official site | ProKabaddi.com |
The 12 franchises
The Pro Kabaddi League is contested by twelve city-based franchises spanning India:
- Bengal Warriors
- Bengaluru Bulls
- Dabang Delhi K.C. (defending champions)
- Gujarat Giants
- Haryana Steelers
- Jaipur Pink Panthers
- Patna Pirates
- Puneri Paltan
- Tamil Thalaivas
- Telugu Titans
- U Mumba
- UP Yoddhas
Recent champions
Eight different franchises have won the league since it began in 2014, which speaks to how open the competition is. The most decorated is Patna Pirates with three consecutive titles (2016 I, 2016 II, 2017). Recent winners:
| Season | Champion |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Dabang Delhi K.C. (2nd title) |
| 2024 | Haryana Steelers |
| 2023-24 | Puneri Paltan |
| 2022 | Jaipur Pink Panthers (2nd title) |
| 2021-22 | Dabang Delhi |
| 2019 | Bengal Warriors |
How the format works
The Pro Kabaddi League has traditionally used a caravan-style scheduling model, with the league travelling to different host cities across the country. Each franchise plays every other team home and away during the league phase, meaning a full round-robin of matches. The top teams then advance to the playoffs, which combine eliminators, semi-finals and a single-match final to decide the champion. The exact playoff structure has evolved over the years; the current season’s format is confirmed on the official ProKabaddi.com site.
A quick refresher on scoring for anyone following the sport for the first time: teams earn raid points (a raider touching defenders and getting back safely across the midline) and tackle points (defenders successfully stopping the raider). Bonus points and “all-outs” (when an entire side is eliminated) add up quickly, which is why kabaddi totals can swing sharply in a single passage of play.
Records worth knowing
Over the league’s history, two players’ records stand out:
- Pardeep Narwal – most career raid points (1,801), by a wide margin. Widely regarded as the league’s greatest raider.
- Fazel Atrachali – most career tackle points (597). The Iranian defender’s consistency shaped how modern PKL sides think about their back three.
How to follow Pro Kabaddi in India
PKL matches are broadcast in India on Star Sports, the league’s television partner since the inaugural 2014 season, and streamed on the corresponding OTT service. Schedules, points tables and match centres are on ProKabaddi.com and the official app. Most fixtures kick off in the evening IST, which is exactly why the league became the country’s most-watched competition after the IPL – it slots into prime family viewing time.
If you follow kabaddi alongside other sports through a single account, our kabaddi coverage page explains how the season fits into the wider sports calendar. This guide itself is purely about following the tournament.
A bit of history
The Pro Kabaddi League premiered in 2014 with eight franchises, inspired by the popularity of kabaddi at the 2006 Asian Games. It expanded to twelve teams from Season 5 onward. In just over a decade the league has completely transformed the sport’s commercial standing in India – kabaddi went from a rural, largely amateur pastime to a prime-time, city-branded professional competition, second only to cricket in Indian TV viewership. The 2025 champions Dabang Delhi K.C. joined the small group of two-time winners; only Patna Pirates (3 titles) and Jaipur Pink Panthers (2) had done it before them.
Kabaddi’s rules, explained properly
Kabaddi is simple to enjoy and slightly more intricate than it first appears. If you are watching a full PKL season for the first time, these are the mechanics that matter.
- The raid. One player from the attacking side — the raider — crosses the midline into the opposition half, tries to touch one or more defenders, and must return across the midline to score. Each defender touched is a point and is sent off the mat.
- The tackle. The seven defenders try to stop the raider returning. A successful tackle scores one point for the defending side and sends the raider off.
- The bonus point. If enough defenders are on the mat, a raider who crosses the bonus line with the correct body position earns an extra point without needing a touch.
- The all-out. If a team loses all seven players, the opposition is awarded two extra points and the whole side is revived. All-outs are the single biggest swing in kabaddi.
- Do-or-die raids. If a team makes two empty raids in a row, the third must produce a point or the raider is out — a rule designed to prevent defensive time-wasting.
- Match length. Two halves of 20 minutes with a five-minute interval.
The all-out is what makes kabaddi such a volatile watch. A side can trail by six points, force an all-out, and lead within ninety seconds. It is also why match totals move so sharply and why momentum matters more than in most sports.
Positions and what to watch
Modern PKL teams are built around clearly defined roles, and knowing them makes the tactical side visible.
| Role | What they do |
|---|---|
| Raider | The primary attacker — the player who scores most of a team’s points |
| Corner defender | Positioned at the mat’s edges; specialists in ankle holds and dashes |
| Cover defender | Works between the corners; usually the team’s most athletic tacklers |
| All-rounder | Contributes in both raiding and defence — increasingly valuable under the salary cap |
Watch how a defence sets its chain: strong corner-cover combinations can trap even elite raiders. Equally, a great raider forces defences into mistakes simply by threatening the bonus line. That cat-and-mouse between a lead raider and a settled back three is the tactical heart of a PKL match.
Why the PKL matters in Indian sport
The Pro Kabaddi League’s significance goes beyond viewing figures. Kabaddi was a village and school sport with deep roots across India but almost no professional infrastructure. The league created full-time contracts, structured coaching, physiotherapy and a transfer market where none existed — and it did so for athletes who, in many cases, came from small towns and rural districts rather than metropolitan academies.
The result is a competition that is genuinely national in a way few Indian leagues are, with franchises drawing on regional traditions from Haryana and Punjab to Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. That it now sits second only to the IPL in Indian sports viewership says as much about the sport’s cultural depth as about the league’s commercial execution.
Season structure and the auction
A Pro Kabaddi season has two distinct phases, and the first one shapes everything that follows.
- The auction. Ahead of each season, franchises build squads through a player auction under a salary cap, with retention rules allowing clubs to keep key players. The auction is followed closely in its own right — a marquee raider going for a record fee is national sports news.
- The league phase. All twelve franchises play each other home and away in a full round-robin, traditionally staged as a travelling caravan through host cities rather than every club hosting at its own venue every week.
- The playoffs. The top teams from the league table advance to eliminators and semi-finals, leading to a single-match final that decides the champion.
The caravan model is distinctive. Rather than a conventional home-and-away calendar, the league sets up in a host city for a block of matches, giving fans in that region a concentrated run of live kabaddi before moving on. It has been central to how the PKL built audiences in cities without a long professional-sport tradition.
The franchises and where they draw support
| Franchise | Region | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dabang Delhi K.C. | Delhi | Defending champions — two titles |
| Patna Pirates | Bihar | Most successful club: three consecutive titles |
| Jaipur Pink Panthers | Rajasthan | Two titles, including the inaugural season |
| U Mumba | Mumbai | 2015 champions; one of the league’s foundation clubs |
| Bengaluru Bulls | Karnataka | 2018-19 champions |
| Bengal Warriors | West Bengal | 2019 champions |
| Puneri Paltan | Pune | 2023-24 champions |
| Haryana Steelers | Haryana | 2024 champions — from kabaddi’s traditional heartland |
| Telugu Titans | Andhra Pradesh / Telangana | Foundation club |
| Tamil Thalaivas | Tamil Nadu | Added in the league’s expansion |
| UP Yoddhas | Uttar Pradesh | Added in the league’s expansion |
| Gujarat Giants | Gujarat | Added in the league’s expansion |
Haryana and Punjab have historically produced a disproportionate share of India’s elite kabaddi players, which gives the Haryana Steelers a particular resonance — a franchise rooted in the region where the sport’s competitive tradition runs deepest. Eight different clubs have won the title in twelve seasons, which for a twelve-team league is a genuinely open record.
Following a PKL season as a newcomer
Kabaddi rewards attention in a way that is easy to miss on a first viewing, because so much happens in a few seconds. A few pointers make a season far more enjoyable.
- Watch the raider’s feet, not the ball. There is no ball. The whole contest is a raider’s approach, feint and escape against a defence trying to time one tackle correctly.
- Count the defenders. The fewer players left on the mat, the more dangerous each raid becomes — and the closer the side is to an all-out.
- Track the do-or-die raids. Two empty raids in a row and the third is compulsory. Those moments produce a disproportionate share of a match’s turning points.
- Note the substitutions. Coaches rotate specialists in and out constantly, and a well-timed substitution before a do-or-die raid is a genuine tactical move.
A full PKL season runs for weeks with matches most nights, so it is worth picking a franchise to follow rather than trying to watch everything. Regional loyalty is the usual starting point, and it is a good one — kabaddi’s fanbases map closely onto where the sport is strongest.
The league’s place in Indian sport
Kabaddi’s professional era arrived quickly. Before 2014 there was no full-time domestic career in the sport; a decade later, the Pro Kabaddi League supports twelve franchises with professional coaching staff, sports science, an auction market and national television coverage. Athletes who would once have played at district level while working other jobs now have contracts, and the pathway from village and school competitions into the professional league is genuinely open.
The audience followed. Second only to the IPL in Indian sports viewership is a remarkable position for a sport that had no professional structure at all a dozen years ago, and it reflects something the league understood early: kabaddi did not need to be explained to Indian audiences. Most viewers already knew the rules from playing it at school. What was missing was a professional stage, and that is what the PKL built.
Looking beyond the domestic season? Our Kabaddi World Cup guide explains why there is more than one tournament by that name, and what India have actually won.
This is an editorial guide – schedule, teams and venues – and does not offer betting tips, odds or predictions. Readdy Anna Cricket is for adults 18 and over; please play responsibly and set your own limits. Online gaming laws in India changed under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 and vary by state – check the rules where you live. Fixtures can change; always confirm against the official tournament schedule.