The last league stage match of the ongoing IPL 2026 will be played between Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Capitals at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Sunday. 

Qualification scenarios:

Delhi Capitals are all but out of the playoffs race as Rajasthan Royals have a superior Net Run Rate than the former.

RR and DC differ by over 200 runs on NRR and thus even if RR loses their final game against MI, DC won’t stand a chance to leapfrog Riyan Parag’s team on NRR. 

On the other hand, if Punjab Kings win their last game by 10 runs, KKR will need to win against DC by 61 runs. PBKS have a head start on NRR at 0.227 to KKR’s 0.011. But KKR will have to hope that RR loses their final game.

Meanwhile, KKR were able to keep themselves afloat in the tournament with a four-wicket win against Mumbai Indians in the last game. Manish Pandey scored a crucial knock of 45 runs off 33 balls in the previous game while making the most of his experience on a challenging Kolkata wicket.

Delhi Capitals also registered a five-wicket win against Rajasthan Royals in the last game with Mitchell Starc taking four wickets. DC haven’t been able to come up with a consistent performance after getting a promising start in the season and they would be disappointed as they stand at the exit doors of the tournament.

Head to Head: Matches: 36, Won by KKR: 20, Won by DC: 15, No result: 1.

Kolkata Knight Riders Squad: Ajinkya Rahane(c), Finn Allen, Angkrish Raghuvanshi(w), Cameron Green, Manish Pandey, Sunil Narine, Anukul Roy, Varun Chakaravarthy, Saurabh Dubey, Kartik Tyagi, Matheesha Pathirana, Vaibhav Arora, Ramandeep Singh, Tejasvi Dahiya, Rovman Powell, Navdeep Saini, Tim Seifert, Umran Malik, Rahul Tripathi, Sarthak Ranjan, Prashant Solanki, Daksh Kamra, Blessing Muzarabani

Delhi Capitals Squad: KL Rahul(w), Pathum Nissanka, Nitish Rana, Sameer Rizvi, Tristan Stubbs, Axar Patel(c), Ashutosh Sharma, Kyle Jamieson, Mitchell Starc, Kuldeep Yadav, T Natarajan, David Miller, Karun Nair, Dushmantha Chameera, Lungi Ngidi, Mukesh Kumar, Ajay Jadav Mandal, Prithvi Shaw, Auqib Nabi Dar, Rehan Ahmed, Tripurana Vijay, Abishek Porel, Sahil Parakh, Vipraj Nigam, Madhav Tiwari