On 23 September, a Royal Challengers Bengaluru jacket walked a runway in Milan. Not a replica. Not a fan piece. A PUMA bomber taken apart and rebuilt by Dhruv Kapoor, a Delhi designer who trained at Istituto Marangoni and worked at Etro before starting his label in 2013, shown as part of his Spring/Summer 2027 collection "Presence." It is the first time an IPL franchise has appeared at a major fashion week. Eleven days later the three pieces are on PUMA India at ₹49,999, ₹55,999 and ₹61,999.
Read those numbers again. A standard RCB fan jacket is a ₹4,000 purchase. These are twelve to fifteen times that, and PUMA is selling them in two physical stores in the whole country: Select Citywalk in Delhi and 100 Feet Road in Bengaluru. This is not merchandise. It is PUMA India testing whether cricket can carry a luxury price tag, and it picked the one team with the fanbase to find out.
Why RCB, and Why Now
Because RCB finally has the trophies to match the following. The franchise waited 18 years for its first IPL title in 2025, then went back-to-back on 1 June 2026, beating Gujarat Titans by five wickets in Ahmedabad with Virat Kohli unbeaten on 75, per the match reports in The Statesman. Only CSK and MI had won consecutive titles before. The team that was a punchline for a decade is now the most commercially valuable name in the league.
PUMA has been RCB's kit partner for six years, and the money is already there. SGI Europe reports that the 2026 RCB jersey became PUMA's top-selling apparel item globally within its first week, and that athleisure, meaning the stuff you wear to a café rather than a stadium, is now nearly 40 percent of RCB's merchandise mix. New ownership arrived in March 2026 too: a consortium of Aditya Birla Group, The Times Group, Bolt Ventures and Blackstone bought the franchise from United Spirits for around $1.78 billion. Owners who pay that much want the brand to live outside the 60 days of IPL. Milan is how you do that.
What Kapoor Actually Made
Three jackets, all built from existing PUMA pieces. PUMA's own copy says Kapoor "reworks both through bold proportions, hand-finished surfaces and ornamented details, turning familiar teamwear into three collectible runway pieces." Bold Outline's report from the show describes performance textiles and technical components "reconstructed and layered with handcrafted intervention." In plain terms: zip tracks, panels and linings from PUMA's performance range, cut up and rebuilt with embroidery and hand-finishing, with the RCB red-and-gold and cricket motifs worked in.
The lineup on PUMA India: the Dual Front Bomber in Flat Bronze at ₹49,999, the Dual Front Sleeveless Jacket in PUMA Black at ₹55,999, and the Dual Front Half Sleeve Bomber in PUMA Black at ₹61,999. "Dual Front" is the design idea across all three, a layered double-front construction that reads as two jackets stacked. Unbox Daily's breakdown adds that the half-sleeve version carries genuine leather at the collar lining and contrast panels, which would explain why it is the most expensive of the three; we could not confirm that detail against PUMA's page, so treat it as theirs.
Our take: these are good jackets and bad merchandise, and PUMA knows it. The Flat Bronze bomber is the only one a non-fan would wear without reading the label. The black pieces lean on the RCB association to justify the price, and at ₹55,999 for a sleeveless jacket, that is a lot of weight on a cricket badge. But judging them as merch misses what they are. They are proof-of-concept pieces for the real collection.
The Real Collection Lands in March, and That Is the One to Watch
Every report on the show, from SGI Europe to Bold Outline to Hypebeast, ends the same way: a wider PUMA x RCB x Dhruv Kapoor collection arrives before the 2027 IPL season, which means March 2027. That is the line that matters for anyone who shops at our end of the market. Three ₹50,000-plus runway jackets do not need a sneaker. A full collection for IPL season almost certainly does, and PUMA has the Speedcat, the Palermo and the Mostro all in a hot streak right now.
Nobody has confirmed footwear. Kapoor has not said it, PUMA has not said it, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But PUMA India built a low-profile sneaker business this year off the back of exactly this kind of crossover energy, and RCB red on a Speedcat is the most obvious shoe in Indian sportswear that does not exist yet.
Where to Buy and Whether You Should
PUMA.com India, the PUMA app, and the two stores above, with Kapoor's own webstore and stores as a second channel per Bold Outline. Sizes are limited and this is a collector's run, so expect the Flat Bronze bomber to go first. There is no resale market to quote; nothing has traded, and three-piece runway capsules rarely build one in India.
Should you? If you are an RCB fan with ₹50,000 to spend on one garment, the Flat Bronze bomber is the piece. It is the one that will still look like fashion in 2030 rather than like a season. If you are a sneaker person watching this because it is PUMA, save the money and wait for March. The jackets are the announcement. The collection is the product.
Eighteen years without a trophy, two titles in two summers, and now a runway in Milan. RCB's arc is the most Indian sports story of the decade, and PUMA is the brand that stuck around long enough to monetise the ending. Until the March collection shows up, our authenticated sneaker stock is where the Bengaluru crowd is still spending.
For how a single cricketer, not a team, became a sneaker brand in his own right, read our piece on Virat Kohli's One8 sneaker line.
