Royal Challengers Bengaluru at the WPL 2027 auction: the champions with ₹1.15 crore to spend

Royal Challengers Bengaluru are the reigning WPL champions, and they walk into the 2027 auction on 28 October with ₹1.15 crore, five places to fill and two overseas slots. After a first season in which they won two of eight games, the club has now won two of the last three titles. The auction is about keeping that group together, not rebuilding it.

Below is how the club got here, who it kept and released, and the players CricOptics's forecast thinks it will pursue. The history and the lists come from our results and the league's published figures. The target section is a simulation and says so.

A short history: from last place to two titles

The franchise was sold in the 2023 rights auction to the owners of the IPL side, and began life as Royal Challengers Bangalore before the name changed to Bengaluru. At the first player auction it made the biggest single bid of the league, ₹3.4 crore for Smriti Mandhana, and added Richa Ghosh at ₹1.9 crore, Ellyse Perry at ₹1.7 crore and Renuka Singh at ₹1.5 crore.

The first season did not repay it. Bangalore won two games and lost six, tied for the bottom of the table with Gujarat. In 2024 they won four and lost four, which was enough for third place and the eliminator, where they beat Mumbai by five runs. They then beat Delhi by eight wickets in the final for their first title. The 2025 season went the other way: three wins, four defeats and one no-result, fourth place and out.

In 2026 they won six of eight league games, finished top of the table, went straight into the final and beat Delhi by six wickets to take a second title.

The three best run-scorers in club history are the three they have kept. Mandhana has 1,023 WPL runs for the franchise, Perry 972 and Ghosh 814. With the ball the leader is Shreyanka Patil with 30 wickets, then Georgia Wareham on 19 and Nadine de Klerk on 18.

Who they retained

The league lists 13 players held by Bengaluru, for ₹13.85 crore. That leaves ₹1.15 crore. Four of the 13 are overseas.

The top three are the batting core: Mandhana on ₹3.5 crore, Ghosh on ₹2.75 crore and Perry on ₹2.0 crore. They are ₹8.25 crore of the ₹13.85 crore, about 60 per cent. The next group is made up of the bowlers and all-rounders bought or kept in 2026: Lauren Bell at ₹90 lakh, Pooja Vastrakar at ₹85 lakh, Arundhati Reddy at ₹75 lakh, Nadine de Klerk and Radha Yadav at ₹65 lakh each, and Georgia Voll and Shreyanka Patil at ₹60 lakh each. Sayali Satghare is at ₹30 lakh, Prema Rawat at ₹20 lakh and Prathyoosha Kumar at ₹10 lakh.

Several of these deals show how far prices moved at the 2026 mega auction. Vastrakar was on ₹1.9 crore in the earlier seasons and is retained at ₹85 lakh. Prema Rawat, bought for ₹1.2 crore in 2025, is on ₹20 lakh. Retention prices here are the 2026 contract carried forward, so Bengaluru are keeping players at the post-reset level.

By role, the retained group is three all-rounders (Perry, Vastrakar, de Klerk), two batters (Mandhana, Voll), one wicketkeeper (Ghosh) and six bowlers.

Who they released

Four players left. Grace Harris, the Australian all-rounder, was the most expensive at ₹75 lakh in 2026 and is back in the pool with a ₹30 lakh base. Linsey Smith, the left-arm spinner, and D Hemalatha were each on ₹30 lakh, and Gautami Naik, a batter, was the fourth. Harris and Naik are in the pool list we hold; Smith and Hemalatha are not.

Harris scored 237 runs for the club in the last two seasons, and losing her is the one release that costs something on the field.

Who they may target

The squad is close to complete, which makes the budget decide the shopping. With five places to fill and ₹10 lakh held back for each of the other four, Bengaluru can spend at most about ₹75 lakh on one player. That is exactly what they paid for Harris.

CricOptics replays the auction 400 times, using each club's purse, open places and the roles it kept. The result for Bengaluru is a list of overseas names, because two of its five places are overseas and the best value is there.

Harris herself is the most frequent target, with Bengaluru in the bidding in about eight runs in ten. But the forecast almost never has them winning her: UP Warriorz, with ₹3.75 crore, buy her in nearly every run, for a typical price of about ₹1.15 crore. After her the model's interest is spread across Orla Prendergast, an all-rounder with a ₹30 lakh base, Charli Knott, an all-rounder at ₹10 lakh whom Bengaluru win in about two runs in ten, Sophia Dunkley, a batter at ₹50 lakh, Samantha Bates, a bowler at ₹10 lakh, and Nonkululeko Mlaba, a bowler at ₹30 lakh.

The realistic picture is a club that fills a couple of places at or near base price, rather than winning a bidding war it has not the money to finish.

What to watch

If the forecast is right, the most interesting moment for Bengaluru is Harris's set: whether they push past ₹75 lakh to bring her back, and whether they can afford the rest of the squad if they do. The other question is depth in the Indian pool, where their open places have to be filled at the lowest prices.

The forecast has not been backtested, because no earlier WPL auction in our data holds its pool and base prices, and it cannot see which players a club wants. Treat it as a typical outcome, not a prediction.