The Lankan Premier League is the T20 tournament of Sri Lanka. The tournament started in 2020 and is managed by Sri Lanka Cricket.
The tournament is played between five franchise teams. Each team represents a city of Sri Lanka. The participating teams represent Colombo, Jaffna, Kandy, Dambulla, and Galle. In the first three seasons, players of each team were chosen through a draft system.
Starting in the 2023 season, an auction decides which player goes to which team. Ahead of the auction, each team can directly sign two local and two overseas players. Teams began with a salary cap of USD 1 million. Out of these each team could use USD 500,000 for direct signing of players. A single squad can have no more than six overseas players.
The tournament follows a double round-robin and knockout format. This means that each team initially plays the other team twice in the league stage. A team gets two points for a win, one for a shared result or tie, and zero for a loss. If two teams are tied at the same number of points, then the better team is decided based on the number of wins, followed by net run rate.
At the end of the round-robin stage, the top four teams progress to the playoffs. The first two positioned teams face each other in the first qualifier. The winner of this match progresses to the final. The third and fourth positioned teams play an eliminator. The winner of this match plays the loser of the first qualifier in the second qualifier. The winner of this match becomes the second finalist.
The most successful team at the tournament as of 2024 is the Jaffna Kings who won the first three editions of the tournament. Avishka Fernando is the leading run-getter of the tournament with 1165 runs to his name. Wanindu Hasaranga is the most successful bowler, having taken 55 wickets.
