Defending champion Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will take on Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on March 22 in the first match of the 2025 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

The full schedule for IPL 2025 was announced on Sunday. Qualifier 1 (May 20) and Eliminator(May 21) will be held in Hyderabad while Kolkata will host Qualifier 2 (May 23) and the Final (May 25).

Overall, 74 matches will be held across 13 venues in 65 days, including 12 double-headers.

Last year’s runner-up Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) will host Rajasthan Royals (RR) in its tournament-opener on March 23. Later on the same day, Chennai Super Kings (CSK) will be up against Mumbai Indians (MI) in the battle of five-time champions in Chennai.

READ | IPL 2025 Schedule: Full fixtures list, dates, venues announced

MI and CSK will meet again in Mumbai on April 20.

CSK and RCB will also play each other twice, on March 28 in Chennai and May 3 in Bengaluru.

Delhi Capitals (DC) will first play Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in Visakhapatnam on March 24 while Shreyas Iyer-led Punjab Kings (PBKS) will begin its campaign against Gujarat Titans (GT) on March 25 in Ahmedabad.

On May 18, the last day of the league stage, GT will face CSK in Ahmedabad while LSG will be up against SRH in Lucknow.

Apart from the 10 main host venues, three sides will also play some of their homes games elsewhere – RR (Guwahati), DC (Visakhapatnam) and PBKS (Dharamsala). Guwahati and Visakhapatnam will host two games each while three matches will be played in Dharamsala.