The WPL 2027 player auction goes ahead at the Grand Hyatt in Kochi on October 28, with all five franchises having finalised their retentions ahead of the sale, confirming the venue and date set out earlier this month. Across the league, 63 players have been retained, including 23 overseas names, leaving 27 slots open for the auction, seven of them reserved for overseas players.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru have retained a core built around Smriti Mandhana, Ellyse Perry and Richa Ghosh among 13 retained players, while Mumbai Indians have built their 11-player group around Harmanpreet Kaur and Amelia Kerr. Delhi Capitals have kept a top order featuring Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma and Annabel Sutherland across 13 retentions, Gujarat Giants have retained the largest group of the five at 15 players led by Sophie Devine, Ashleigh Gardner and Beth Mooney, and UP Warriorz have kept 11 players headed by Meg Lanning, Deepti Sharma and Sophie Ecclestone.
With 63 retentions locked in, the auction will be a shorter sale than a full mega-auction but still carries real stakes for teams needing depth in specific roles — overseas all-rounders and finishers in particular, given only seven of the open slots are set aside for overseas players. A pool of more than 140 registered players will go under the hammer for those 27 remaining places.
The sale sets up squads for a WPL 2027 season scheduled to run from January 14 to February 7, with franchises using the auction to patch gaps left by retention decisions. For fantasy purposes, the retained cores mean the league's biggest home-grown and overseas stars are already locked into their existing teams, so the auction's impact will be felt mostly in squad depth rather than any wholesale change to a franchise's likely best XI.
With the headline retentions settled, value at the auction is likely to come from mid-tier overseas all-rounders and death bowlers filling the seven remaining overseas slots — a group worth tracking once Wednesday's sale confirms where they land, and one that could shift a squad's balance more than its star picks.
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Retention figures and squad details in this article are verified against same-day and freshly re-checked reporting as of October 27, 2026.
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