Defending champion Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had earlier expressed to the BCCI officials their desire to retain as many core players as possible. During a meeting on 31 July, the Sunrisers Hyderabad management also said the same thing, but IPL officials allowed each team to retain a maximum of six players, one of whom must be an uncapped Indian cricketer.
KKR had to face a lot of problems in their retention for the final as their aim was to retain the key players. Since the BCCI made the IPL retention rules official, the management has interacted with the players several times, trying to understand their thought processes and at what price they are interested in being retained.
BCCI said in the plan that the first retention will earn Rs 18 crore, after which the second and third retention will earn Rs 14 crore and Rs 11 crore respectively. But the rule that came after this had a different twist. The twist was that the fourth retention would get Rs 18 crore and the fifth retention would get Rs 11 crore. The uncapped player can be registered for Rs 4 crore.
With Harshit Rana not making his debut, it was clear that the team management would retain him as an uncapped player, but there were a lot of doubts about the other players, especially captain Shreyas Iyer. But at the last moment he surprised everyone by retaining Andre Russell.
KKR Retained Players 2025
| player | Roll | Price |
| Rinku Singh | batsman | 13 crores |
| andre russell | allrounder | 12 crores |
| Varun Chakraborty | bowler | 12 crores |
| Sunil Narine | allrounder | 12 crores |
| Harshit Rana | bowler | 4 crores |
| Ramandeep Singh | allrounder | 4 crores |
KKR Released Players 2025
| PLAYER | ROLE |
| Shreyas Iyer | batter |
| Nitish Rana | All-rounder |
| Venkatesh Iyer | All-rounder |
| Sunil Narine | Bowler |
| Jason Roy | batter |
| Vaibhav Arora | Bowler |
| Rinku Singh | batter |
| Rahmanullah Gurbaz | Keeper-batter |
| Suyash Sharma | Bowler |
| Harshit Rana | Bowler |
| Anukul Roy | All-rounder |
| KS India | Keeper-batter |
| Chetan Sakariya | Bowler |
| Mitchell Starc | Bowler |
| Ramandeep Singh | All-rounder |
| Angkrish Raghuvanshi | batter |
| Sherfane Rutherford | batter |
| Manish Pandey | batter |
| Mujeeb-Ur-Rahman | Bowler |
| gus atkinson | Bowler |
| Saqib Hussain | Bowler |
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) Remaining Purse for IPL 2025 Auction
Purse left: 48 crores