RCB And GT Strong Favorites To Win IPL 2026 Title: With the league phase of IPL 2026 over, all eyes are now on the playoffs. Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), Gujarat Titans (GT), Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) are among the top 4 teams. These four teams have already won the title once. But if we look at the history of IPL, the statistics show that RCB or GTK have more chances of winning the title.
RCB and Gujarat Titans will face each other in Qualifier-1 at Dharamsala on Tuesday. The team that wins this match will directly reach the final. On the other hand, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals will compete in the eliminator in New Chandigarh on Wednesday. If the losing team leaves the tournament, the winner will have to play Qualifier-2. It is known that the team that lost in the Qualifier-1 and the winning team of the Eliminator will play the Qualifier-2 match.
But if we look at the statistics of the current playoffs format that has been in force since 2011, it is clear that the chances of winning the title are more for the top-2 teams. 14 times in the last 15 seasons, one of the two teams that have played Qualifier-1 has won the IPL trophy. That means the chances of RCB or Gujarat Titans winning the title this time too are 93.3 percent. And the chances of SRH or Rajasthan Royals playing the eliminator to win the title is only 6.66 percent.
In the current playoffs format, Sunrisers Hyderabad are the only team to have won the title without finishing in the top-2. SRH, who finished third in 2016, won the trophy by defeating RCB in the final. After that, no team that finished in fourth place became the champion. That is why Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad will face a tough challenge this time. What’s more interesting is that the team that won the Qualifier-1 12 times in the last 15 seasons eventually became the IPL champions. Only Mumbai Indians in 2013, 2017 and Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2016 broke this trend. Also, the teams that played Qualifier-1 reached the final 12 times out of 15.
All these statistics are now building more confidence in RCB and Gujarat fans. But T20 cricket is another name for uncertainty. Things can change completely in a single match. Rajasthan Royals, especially young players like Vaibhav Suryavanshi, who are in form, as well as Sunrisers Hyderabad, who are rushing with destructive batting, are also teams capable of rewriting history. This makes the IPL 2026 playoffs even more exciting. Let’s see what happens.
