What happened
The Pakistan Cricket Board on Sunday confirmed that the player auction for the 11th edition of the HBL Pakistan Super League will be held on Wednesday, 11 February, formalising a shift from the draft model the league has used in every prior season. PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi presided over a day-long workshop at Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore attended by representatives from all eight franchises, PSL officials and members of the national T20 World Cup squad.
The workshop agreed on a four-tier base price structure with the top bracket set at Rs42 million, followed by Rs22m, Rs11m and Rs6m brackets, with minimum incremental bids scaling from Rs250,000 at the lowest bracket to Rs15m above the top bracket. Each franchise will work with a Rs450m salary purse, extendable to Rs505m if a foreign player is signed directly outside the auction, and will be required to carry a minimum of 16 and a maximum of 20 players per squad.
What changed
The auction replaces a draft that, in earlier PSL editions, allocated players to franchises from a fixed pool with pre-set salary bands. Under the new system, franchises will compete openly for players and engage them on two-year contracts, with a maximum of seven retentions permitted ahead of the 12th edition and a grand auction planned after the 12th season where each franchise can retain up to five players.
The PCB also locked in two structural rules aimed at broadening participation: every squad must include at least two uncapped Under-23 players, with at least one of them in the playing XI, and each playing XI must feature between three and four foreign players drawn from a foreign contingent of five to seven per squad. Naqvi framed the change as a “landmark step” that “offers players better financial opportunities through an increased salary purse and a transparent acquisition process.”
How it fits together
The auction date sits inside a larger PSL 11 calendar that was already taking shape. The board confirmed earlier in January that the upcoming season would run from 26 March to 3 May 2026, and the addition of Hyderabad and Sialkot as the league’s seventh and eighth franchises, sold for a combined Rs3.6 billion earlier in the month, expands the player pool the auction is designed to distribute. Eight franchises each carrying a Rs450m purse implies a much larger overall salary spend than previous editions.
The workshop came one day after the PCB named its T20 World Cup squad, with Babar Azam and Shaheen Afridi retained and Haris Rauf omitted. Squad members were present at the Lahore workshop alongside franchise officials, a sequencing the board pointed to as evidence that franchise planning and national-team planning are now moving in step.
What is still uncertain
The PCB has not published the final list of registered players who will enter the February 11 auction pool, including how many overseas cricketers have committed to the process. It is also unclear how franchises will use their direct-signing slot for a foreign player outside the auction, and whether the Rs450m base purse will be adjusted for teams that lose more retentions than the maximum allowed. Auction-day logistics, including venue and broadcast arrangements, have not yet been announced.
Sources & reporting notes
This is a synthesis of published reporting and an official PCB press release, not eyewitness reporting. Sources were reviewed on 2026-01-25.
- Dawn — PCB announces player auctions for upcoming Pakistan Super League on Feb 1125 January 2026 · Provides auction date, base-price brackets, franchise purse, squad-composition rules and Naqvi's statement.
- Pakistan Cricket Board — Workshop for first-ever HBL PSL Player Auction held at Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore25 January 2026 · Official primary record of the workshop's decisions on auction mechanics and incremental bid rules.
