Kolkata Knight Riders announced that the franchise will retire the No 12 jersey in honour of their former star all-rounder Andre Russell. Kolkata had been Russell's home since 2014, when the West Indian all-rounder joined the franchise from Delhi Daredevils (Now Capital).

KKR's decision to retire Russell's jersey No was announced at the team's event before the start of the season. Russell was felicitated for his contribution towards the franchise during the Knights Unplugged 3.0 event. During the event, Rinku Singh was appointed as the vice captain of the team.

Andre Russell announced his retirement from IPL on November 30 after a long saga of weather KKR will retain him before the auction or not. Eventually, the West Indian announced his IPL retirement and has since joined KKR's support staff as the franchise's new "Power Coach" for the 2026 season.

During his IPL career, Russell became one of the icons of the tournament. The all-rounder's ability to win a match with both bat and ball propelled him as one of the all-time greats of the Indian Premier League.

Russell played 140 games, scoring 2,651 runs, including 12 fifties and taking 123 wickets, with one five-wicket haul. He made his IPL debut in 2012 for Delhi Daredevils (now Capitals) before joining KKR in the 2014 auction.

Russell guided KKR to two titles in 2014 and 2024. The West Indian also won the IPL MVP award twice during this run, in 2015 and 2019.

KKR will start their campaign against the five-time champions, the Mumbai Indians (MI), on March 29 in Mumbai.

Kolkata Knight Riders 2026 Squad:

Ajinkya Rahane (c), Rinku Singh (vc), Sunil Narine, Varun Chakaravarthy, Cameron Green, Matheesha Pathirana, Rachin Ravindra, Finn Allen, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ramandeep Singh, Manish Pandey, Rahul Tripathi, Umran Malik, Vaibhav Arora, Kartik Tyagi, Saurabh Dubey, Rovman Powell, Anukul Roy, Tim Seifert, Tejasvi Singh, Prashant Solanki, Daksh Kamra, Sarthak Ranjan, Blessing Muzarabani.

Saurabh Dubey and Blessing Muzarabani joined as replacements for the injured Akash Deep and the unavailable Mustafizur Rahman. Harshit Rana is also sidelined for the season due to a knee injury, while Matheesha Pathirana is expected to join the squad in mid-April following a calf strain.