IPL 2026 Playoffs and Final — Who Won IPL 2026 and How

Rajasthan Royals beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 47 runs at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Stadium, Mullanpur, on 27 May. RR posted 243/8 from 20 overs and SRH were all out for 196 in 19.2. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi received the Player of the Match award, according to the season account in the dossier.

This was the match between third and fourth in the league. Hyderabad had earned 18 points, two more than Rajasthan, but a higher league position did not rescue them after a completed defeat. The Eliminator gives neither participant the extra route available to the top two. Rajasthan advanced; Hyderabad's season ended.

The result also illustrates why league form and a playoff outcome should be read separately. RR qualified in fourth with 16 points and then beat a side above them. Sooryavanshi's match award is separate from his season-long batting award; his 776 runs and Orange Cap are covered on the Orange Cap page. No individual innings score for this match is supplied here because the dossier does not provide one.

Gujarat Titans returned to the final with a seven-wicket victory over Rajasthan Royals on 29 May. Rajasthan made 214/6 in 20 overs at Mullanpur, setting a target of 215. Gujarat reached 219/3 in 18.4 overs, with Shubman Gill scoring 104. In cricket notation, 18.4 means 18 completed overs and four balls; it is not a decimal measure of overs.

This match completed Gujarat's second-chance route. They lost to RCB in Qualifier 1, met the Eliminator winners, and won the right to face Bengaluru again. Rajasthan's win over Hyderabad had kept their campaign alive, but losing here ended it one match short of the final.

The dossier confirms Gill's century but does not confirm the Player of the Match for Qualifier 2. We therefore do not attach that award to him or to another player. A large individual contribution and an official match award are distinct facts, even when the same person might plausibly hold both.

The league table supplies four qualifiers, but not four identical routes. First and second play Qualifier 1. Its winner goes straight to the final, while its loser waits for the winner of the Eliminator between third and fourth. Those two teams meet in Qualifier 2 for the remaining place in the championship match.

Finishing in the top two is valuable because a team can lose its opening playoff and still win the tournament. Gujarat Titans demonstrated the first part of that route in 2026: defeat by 92 runs in Qualifier 1, followed by a successful chase against Rajasthan. RCB took the shorter route, winning Qualifier 1 and then the final.

A tied playoff is decided by a Super Over, with further Super Overs if needed. If a result remains impossible, the team placed higher in the league progresses under clauses 16.11.1–16.11.2 of the 2026 Playing Conditions. This fallback is not a replacement for playing out a match that can produce a result.

The league-table tie-break rules and the playoff fallback answer different questions. League points, wins and net run rate establish the seedings before the knockout stage. Once the playoffs begin, completed match results determine who advances. Playoff totals do not feed back into league points or league NRR; use the NRR calculator for the rate calculation, not for deciding a knockout winner.

RCB's first title came at the same venue a year earlier. In the 2025 final at Ahmedabad on 3 June, their 190/9 was enough to beat Punjab Kings, who finished on 184/7. Krunal Pandya was Player of the Match, and the season account records an attendance of 91,419.

The two victories used different paths to a result: Bengaluru defended a total in 2025 and completed a chase in 2026. Both count as one title. Together they put RCB alongside Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians among teams with consecutive championships. The complete finals history shows the champions, runners-up, margins and venues for all 19 seasons from 2008.