How will The Hundred auction work? Rules, format, salary cap & more explained

Around 200 players each have been listed for both The Hundred 2026 men’s and women’s auction.

The Hundred is entering its new era, with its first auction being held on March 11 (women’s) and March 12 (men’s) at Piccadilly Lights, a venue in central London. Before this season, they used to have a draft system for recruitment since their inception.

The change is seen mainly due to the new ownership of The Hundred’s eight franchises, where external buyers bought stakes in the franchises. All eight teams were earlier owned by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for the first five seasons. Last year, they sold 49% stakes of each team to external investors and the remaining 51% to the host counties.

Some host counties later sold more of their stakes to the same buyers. Three teams have already changed their names, and a few others have also rebranded themselves, highlighting their new Indian Premier League (IPL) owners or co-owners. Now, let’s have a look at the rules of the first auction of The Hundred.

Pre-auction signing and squad

Before the The Hundred auction, all teams were allowed to secure a maximum of four players. Out of these four, three can be new signings and one must be a retained player from last season. This meant that the franchises targeted some marquee players in signings and will be entering the auction with a reduced salary budget.

Stages of The Hundred auction

The auction will be held in three phases.

• Hero Players

The hero players are the marquee players who are popular among the teams. There are almost 50 players grouped in this set according to their roles. They will attract huge bids, and teams would like to form their squads around them.

• Ranked Players

After the round of Hero players, the teams will nominate up to 25 players from the list. The players who are most commonly nominated will become “ranked players.” These players will then go under the hammer.

• Nominated Players

The next and final stage of the auction will involve a draw which will determine which team gets the first chance to nominate a player who is not signed yet. If that player doesn’t get a bid from another team, the player will be sold to the franchise that nominated them. This process will continue until all squads are filled.

Salary caps and payments of players

Teams will have to sign players according to their salary budget. The men’s franchises will have a budget of €2.05 million, while their women’s teams will have a budget of €880,000. Most of these budgets have already been used for making pre-season signings.

Teams that signed three players have spent €850,000, while teams that signed four players have spent €950,000. For the women’s teams, the amount spent on pre-season signings ranges from €310,000 to €360,000.

Wildcard picks

The squad will not be filled even after the auction ends. Teams will be leaving two spots in their squad open for wildcard picks. The remaining two players will be selected based on performance in England’s domestic T20 competition, the Vitality Blast. It gives a fair chance to emerging talents from England.

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