The two-day auction will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia over Sunday and Monday, and shape the team composition of the 10 IPL franchises for the next three years. Before the much-awaited mega auction kicks off, here are five key things to know about it:

1. What's Special About This Mega Auction?

IPL mega auctions are held every three years, but rarely do we have big Indian names like Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul all available to be snapped. All three were captains in the previous edition – Iyer in fact won the 2024 title with the Kolkata Knight Riders – and are certain to trigger bidding wars. On top of that, this will be the first mega auction with the impact substitute rule in play, and it would be interesting to see how that alters teams' strategies.

2. How Many Marquee Sets Are There, And Who All Are In Them?

There are two marquee sets this time, each comprising six players. The first list includes Pant, Iyer, Arshdeep Singh, Jos Buttler, Kagiso Rabada and Mitchell Starc. The second set features Rahul, Yuzvendra Chahal, Liam Livingstone, David Miller, Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj.

3. Who Are The Other Players To Watch Out For?

A large number of current and former India stars will be up for brags. This includes Ravichandran Ashwin, Devdutt Padikkal, Krunal Pandya, Shardul Thakur, Washington Sundar, Ishan Kishan, Harshal Patel, Khaleel Ahmed, Deepak Chahar, Venkatesh Iyer, Mukesh Kumar, Avesh Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Prasidh Krishna, Umesh Yadav, T Natarajan, among others.

Among the overseas players, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Faf du Plessis, David Warner, Devon Conway, Tim David, Rachin Ravindra, Quinton de Kock, Sam Curran, Jonny Bairstow are the ones who could cause a stir.

4. What Is Accelerated Auction?

As many as 577 players are in the auction list, but not all of them will undergo bidding. From the 117th player onwards, the accelerated auction process will start. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has informed all the 10 franchises that they will have to nominate a set number of players by 10PM IST on Sunday evening.

After those players go under the hammer, the teams will be asked to submit names of players that were not brought up or went unsold, for one more round of accelerated auction.

5. What Is The Right-To-Match Option? How Can It Be Used?

Franchises were allowed to retain a maximum of six players in the lead-up to the mega auction. At most five of those retained players can be capped and two can be uncapped. If all six players were not retained before the auction, some of them can be bought back using Right-to-Match (RTM) options during the two-day event.

This is how the RTM options work: If a player has been acquired by another franchise at the mega auction, the team that he was part of in IPL 2024 can buy back their player at the end of the bidding process, using the RTM option, by matching the highest bid.

Post that, the franchise that made the winning bid will be given one more chance to increase the bid to whatever amount it wishes to. If so, the player's previous team will need to match the raised bid to buy back its player.