The 2026-27 Ranji Trophy, the 92nd edition of India's premier first-class competition, gets underway on October 11 with its four Elite groups now set. The season runs in two phases — a group league from October 11 to early November, a break while the Syed Mushtaq Ali and Vijay Hazare trophies are played, and a resumption in January before knockouts run through to a final by March 3, 2027. It arrives days after the BCCI signalled it wants its Test-squad regulars turning out for their states before India's New Zealand tour, giving the opening rounds extra weight beyond the usual domestic grind.
The Elite division carries 32 teams split into four groups of eight, with a separate six-team Plate division running alongside it; the top two finishers in each Elite group advance directly to the quarter-finals. Group A is Bihar, Baroda, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh and Vidarbha. Group B is Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Hyderabad, Karnataka, Punjab, Saurashtra and Tripura. Group C is Bengal, Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha and Services. Group D is Chandigarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Mumbai, Railways, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand.
Jammu & Kashmir, who won their maiden Ranji Trophy title in 2025-26 and have since hosted the Irani Cup for the first time — a game they lost to Rest of India by 167 runs — go into the new season as defending champions in a Group A that also features Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and Uttar Pradesh among sides with recent Elite pedigree. Defending the title from a group that, on paper, carries less star power than B or D will be a different test to the one J&K passed last season, but the pressure of being the team to beat is now theirs to handle.
The group draw puts Punjab — the state side of India Test captain Shubman Gill — and Karnataka, the side of vice-captain KL Rahul, in the same Group B, alongside Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Hyderabad, Saurashtra and Tripura. Assam's campaign is confirmed to open against Punjab in round one, with matches across the Elite groups running October 11-14, though neither board had confirmed by this writing whether Gill, Rahul or other centrally contracted players would actually feature in those specific matches — a detail that depends on medical clearance and workload management under the BCCI's broader push.
Beyond the Elite groups themselves, this season doubles as the clearest domestic platform yet for India's red-ball core to find rhythm before a long New Zealand assignment from October 22. Washington Sundar was withdrawn from India's T20I squad against West Indies specifically to prioritise this window, while Rishabh Pant's recent Irani Cup outing in Srinagar was itself framed as a step in the same direction. Whether that translates into Gill, Rahul or the fast-bowling group named by selectors — Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep and others — actually walking out in round one will become clear only once squads are finalised closer to October 11.
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Group lists, tournament structure and fixture details in this article are verified against same-day and freshly re-checked reporting, current as of October 6, 2026; player appearances for specific round-one matches were not yet confirmed at the time of writing.
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