Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), the defending champions, will face Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on the opening night of IPL 2026.
The season-opening game will be played on March 28 at Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium, which was cleared by the Karnataka government recently to host IPL matches after uncertainty following the tragic loss of 11 lives in a stampede last June during RCB’s IPL victory celebrations.
The matches at the Chinnaswamy, however, remain subject to clearance from an expert committee constituted by the Karnataka state government. “The committee will conduct a meeting and inspection of the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium on March 13, 2026, during which a full-scale mock demonstration of match-day arrangements will be carried out to assess the stadium’s preparedness for hosting IPL matches,” an IPL release has said.
The second game of the opening weekend will feature Mumbai Indians (MI) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The opening weekend will not feature double-headers.
With elections scheduled in several states including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam, where KKR, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals have home grounds, the IPL has decided to release the tournament schedule in two phases. On Wednesday the IPL announced the first phase comprising 20 matches, including four double-headers over the weekends of April 4-5 and April 11-12.
All ten teams will play four games each in this phase of the tournament, but it could not be confirmed how the teams have been grouped. In every IPL season that has involved ten teams, the teams have been split into two virtual groups, with each team meeting the teams in their own group twice each, and the teams in the opposite group once each.
This will be the second instance of RCB and SRH facing off in the opening match of an IPL season. They previously did so in 2017, when SRH were the defending champions and RCB the runners-up. For SRH, this will be their second appearance in an IPL opener, while for RCB, this is the seventh such occasion.
RR will wrap up the Guwahati leg of their season in this first phase, which includes three matches at the venue. Their other four home games are set be played at their primary home ground, the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur.
Two other teams have secondary home grounds this season. RCB will play two matches in Raipur and Punjab Kings (PBKS) three matches in Dharamsala.
Since the IPL began in 2008, the schedule has been announced in two parts whenever the country has had general elections – in 2009, 2014, 2019 and 2024 – or states involved in the tournament have had assembly elections.
Nagraj Gollapudi is news editor at ESPNcricinfo
