Highest run chase in IPL history: Punjab Kings’ 265 and the list 2026 rewrote

The highest run chase in IPL history is Punjab Kings’ 265 for 4 against Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 25 April 2026. Delhi batted first and made 264 for 2, KL Rahul carrying his bat for 152 not out. Punjab knocked the target off in 18.5 overs with six wickets standing. It is the biggest chase the league has produced, and Punjab own the second biggest as well.

Below is the full top 15, derived from the ball by ball record of the 1,237 men’s IPL matches played between 2008 and the end of the 2026 season. Two things about this list have changed so completely in the last three years that any version published before 2024 is now unrecognisable, and both are worth understanding before reading the table.

Highest run chase in IPL history: the top 15

Targets, not final scores, decide the order. Matches settled by Duckworth-Lewis-Stern are excluded, because a revised target is not a comparable one. Figures as at the end of IPL 2026.

#	Target	Chased by	Score	Overs	Opponent total	Venue	Date
1	265	Punjab Kings	265/4	18.5	Delhi Capitals 264/2	Arun Jaitley Stadium	25 Apr 2026
2	262	Punjab Kings	262/2	18.4	Kolkata Knight Riders 261/6	Eden Gardens	26 Apr 2024
3	246	Sunrisers Hyderabad	247/2	18.3	Punjab Kings 245/6	Rajiv Gandhi Stadium	12 Apr 2025
4	244	Sunrisers Hyderabad	249/4	18.4	Mumbai Indians 243/5	Wankhede Stadium	29 Apr 2026
5	229	Sunrisers Hyderabad	229/5	18.3	Rajasthan Royals 228/6	Sawai Mansingh Stadium	25 Apr 2026
6	229	Mumbai Indians	229/4	18.4	Lucknow Super Giants 228/5	Wankhede Stadium	4 May 2026
7	228	Royal Challengers Bengaluru	230/4	18.4	Lucknow Super Giants 227/3	Ekana Stadium	27 May 2025
8	226	Delhi Capitals	226/3	19.1	Rajasthan Royals 225/6	Sawai Mansingh Stadium	1 May 2026
9	224	Rajasthan Royals	226/6	19.3	Kings XI Punjab 223/2	Sharjah	27 Sep 2020
10	224	Rajasthan Royals	224/8	20.0	Kolkata Knight Riders 223/6	Eden Gardens	16 Apr 2024
11	223	Rajasthan Royals	228/4	19.2	Punjab Kings 222/4	Mullanpur	28 Apr 2026
12	221	Mumbai Indians	224/4	19.1	Kolkata Knight Riders 220/4	Wankhede Stadium	29 Mar 2026
13	221	Rajasthan Royals	225/3	19.1	Lucknow Super Giants 220/5	Sawai Mansingh Stadium	19 May 2026
14	220	Punjab Kings	223/4	18.5	Sunrisers Hyderabad 219/6	Mullanpur	11 Apr 2026
15	219	Mumbai Indians	219/6	20.0	Chennai Super Kings 218/4	Arun Jaitley Stadium	1 May 2021

A quick way to check any row: the target is always one more than the first innings total, and the chasing score must be at least the target. Row 15 is the tightest instance in the table. Mumbai needed 16 from the last over against Chennai and got there off the final ball, Kieron Pollard unbeaten on 87 from 34. At the other end of the temperament scale, row 3 was settled by a single innings, Abhishek Sharma’s 141 taking Sunrisers past 246 with nine balls unused.

Nine of the top 15 came in a single season

IPL 2026 produced rows 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13 and 14. Widen it slightly and 13 of the 15 have come since 2024. Only Rajasthan’s 224 in Sharjah in 2020 and Mumbai’s last ball 219 in 2021 survive from before that.

The reason is that first innings totals have climbed faster than the list can absorb. The IPL first innings average was 163.0 in 2008 and 171.1 as recently as 2022. It went 183.5 in 2023, 190.1 in 2024, 191.9 in 2025 and 196.0 in 2026. A league that averages 196 batting first will manufacture 220-plus targets routinely, and 2026 duly produced 38 first innings totals of 200 or more in 73 matches.

Successful chases tell the same story from the other end. Counting every match in which the side batting first made 200 or more and lost anyway, there have been 51 in IPL history. Seventeen of them came in 2026, and 37 of the 51 have come since 2023. For the first 15 seasons of the competition, a 200 total was overturned roughly once a year.

The IPL record is not the T20 record, and that matters here

Punjab’s 265 held the world record for less than three months. On 16 July 2026, Washington Freedom chased 267 against MI New York in a Major League Cricket eliminator, Steve Smith and Andries Gous both scoring hundreds in a stand of 241. That is the highest successful chase in men’s T20 cricket anywhere, and it pushed the IPL mark into second place globally.

Plenty of pages still describe Punjab’s 265 as the highest chase in all T20 cricket. It is the highest in the IPL, which is a different and more precise claim. Our own list of the highest team totals in men’s T20 cricket covers the global picture, and there is a separate list of the highest run chases across T20 cricket.

Punjab Kings hold both of the top two

Punjab hold both of the top two places, and they got there in opposite ways. At Eden Gardens in 2024 they lost two wickets in the entire chase: Prabhsimran Singh struck 54 from 20 balls as an impact player to break the back of it, then Jonny Bairstow finished on 108 not out from 48 and Shashank Singh on 68 from 28. They won by eight wickets with eight balls to spare. In Delhi in 2026 it was harder work, four wickets down, with Prabhsimran making 76 and Shreyas Iyer 71 not out to answer KL Rahul.

Across the top 15, Rajasthan Royals appear four times as the chasing side, with Punjab, Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad on three each. Counting all 51 of those 200-plus reversals, and treating each franchise as continuous through its rebrands, Punjab lead outright on 10. Rajasthan and Mumbai have seven each, Sunrisers six, and Delhi and Royal Challengers Bengaluru five apiece.

Where the big chases happen

Three of the top 15 were completed at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur, and all three came in 2026. That is not an accident: Jaipur has the most pronounced chasing bias of any regular IPL venue, with the side batting second winning 44 of 68 matches there.

Three more came at the Wankhede Stadium, two at Eden Gardens, two at the Arun Jaitley Stadium and two at Punjab’s new home in Mullanpur. Notably absent is Chepauk, where the first innings average since 2023 is 172.7 against 193 to 197 at every other major Indian ground, and where the side batting first still wins more often than it loses.

The biggest total nobody could chase

The other half of the record book is worth setting alongside this one. The highest total successfully defended in the IPL is Sunrisers Hyderabad’s 287 for 3 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on 15 April 2024, Travis Head making 102 off 41 balls. Bengaluru replied with 262 for 7 and still lost by 25 runs. The match aggregate of 549 was the highest in T20 cricket at the time.

Delhi’s 264 for 2 in the record chase is therefore the highest first innings total in IPL history that ended in defeat, and Kolkata’s 261 in 2024 is second. At the opposite extreme, the lowest total ever defended in the league is Punjab Kings’ 111 against Kolkata at Mullanpur in 2025, covered in our list of the lowest scores defended in the IPL.

Frequently asked questions

What is the highest run chase in IPL history? Punjab Kings’ 265 for 4 against Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 25 April 2026, completed in 18.5 overs.

Which team has made the most big chases in the IPL? Punjab, counting the Kings XI Punjab years, have run down a 200-plus total 10 times, ahead of Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians on seven each.

What is the highest successful run chase in all T20 cricket? Washington Freedom’s 267 against MI New York in Major League Cricket on 16 July 2026, which passed Punjab’s IPL record set three months earlier.

What is the highest total successfully defended in the IPL? Sunrisers Hyderabad’s 287 for 3 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on 15 April 2024.

How many 200-plus totals have been chased down in the IPL? Fifty-one, of which 17 came in the 2026 season alone and 37 have come since 2023.

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