The WPL auction is in Kochi on October 28, and the deadline that decides it is September 28

Eleven days. That is how long the five Women’s Premier League franchises have to work out who they are keeping, and the WPL 2027 calendar the BCCI sent them on Wednesday makes that the first real decision of the cycle.

Retention lists are due on 28 September. The auction follows a month later, on 28 October, at the Grand Hyatt in Kochi. The season itself has been slotted in from 14 January to 7 February, which will make it the fifth edition of the competition.

The deadline that actually bites

Auction day gets the cameras. The retention deadline is where the squads are really settled, because a name filed on 28 September is a name nobody else can bid for in Kochi.

The timing is tight for anyone with players in Japan. The women’s cricket tournament at the Asian Games runs from 17 to 22 September at Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin, which leaves teams less than a week between the last ball there and the moment their lists have to be with the board. Form shown in Japan will land very late in a process that has been running for weeks.

A top-up, not a rebuild

This is the first auction since the mega auction, and that changes what it is for. The five squads were taken apart and put back together in New Delhi on 27 November last year, when each team could protect a maximum of five players and UP Warriorz went in having kept just one, the uncapped Shweta Sehrawat.

Nothing on that scale is coming in Kochi. Squads are capped at 18 players, no more than six of whom can be overseas, and the salary cap sits at 15 crore rupees. Most of that money is already committed to players bought last November. What is left buys a seamer, or cover for an overseas slot that has turned into a problem. Franchises will spend the next six weeks deciding which of last year’s buys did not work.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru set the bar

The team everyone else is building against won the last one in style. Royal Challengers Bengaluru chased 204 against Delhi Capitals in the final at Vadodara on 5 February, the highest successful chase in WPL history, and took their second title with two balls to spare. Smriti Mandhana made 87 off 41 and Georgia Voll 79 off 54.

Delhi Capitals have played every WPL final there has been and lost all four. Their 203 for 4 was the biggest total the fixture has produced and it still was not enough, and the 165 Mandhana and Voll put on is now the highest stand for any wicket in the competition. That is the sort of defeat that tends to show up in a retention list.

Where it will be played

The window has shifted later. WPL 2026 ran from 9 January to 5 February across 22 matches, split between the Dr DY Patil Sports Academy in Navi Mumbai and the BCA Stadium in Vadodara. The 2027 window starts five days later and ends two days later, which makes it three days shorter than the one just gone.

Venues have not been confirmed. Reports have named the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai, the Kotambi Stadium in Vadodara and a new ground in Varanasi as the grounds under consideration, with the Varanasi option still needing to tick the domestic hosting requirement first. Expect the schedule to follow once the auction has given the season its shape.

Stay across the WPL build-up