Virat Kohli Age 2026: How Old Is Virat Kohli Today?

Last updated: November 10, 2026  ·  By Celebamerica Editorial Staff

Virat Kohli is 38 years old. He was born on 5 November 1988 in Delhi, and he turned 38 on 5 November 2026 — spending his birthday in New Zealand, in the middle of a five-match ODI series against the Black Caps, a day after scoring a match-winning 74 in Auckland. Eighteen years into an international career that began when he was 19, Kohli now plays only ODIs for India and the IPL for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, with the 2027 World Cup in his sights as the final chapter he has spoken about publicly.

That birthday week told the whole story of Kohli at 38. On 4 November 2026, the day before he turned 38, he walked in early at Eden Park after Rohit Sharma fell for a six-ball duck, reached his 80th ODI fifty, and finished on 74 off 51 balls to carry India to a five-wicket win under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method. In the same innings he became the first batter ever to score 13,000 ODI runs at No. 3. Three days later in Wellington he went past Ricky Ponting to become the highest run-scorer against New Zealand in ODI history. The chase master, it turns out, has not slowed down — he has changed gear.

How Old Is Virat Kohli in 2026?

Virat Kohli is 38 years old in November 2026. He was born on 5 November 1988 in Delhi, which makes the maths simple: 2026 minus 1988 is 38, and his birthday has already passed this year. He turned 38 on Thursday, 5 November 2026, and the cricket world marked it the way it always does with Kohli — with tributes from former teammates, franchises and fans, and with a fresh set of numbers attached to his name.

The date is one of the best-documented facts in modern cricket. His Wikipedia profile, sourced from ESPNcricinfo on 4 November 2026, lists “Born 5 November 1988 (age 38), New Delhi, India”. SportsAdda’s age profile, updated for the birthday, puts it the same way: born 5 November 1988 in Delhi, 38 years old as of 5 November 2026. Sportskeeda’s birthday piece on 5 November 2026 reported that “Indian batter Virat Kohli turned 38 on Thursday (November 5)”, and CricTracker ran the same line the same day. When every outlet agrees on a date, it is because the date has never been in doubt.

What makes 38 worth writing about is not the number itself. Plenty of batters have played at 38. What is unusual is how Kohli is playing at 38: as a one-format international, in the middle of a five-match ODI series on the other side of the world, scoring at a strike rate above 120 in 2026 and breaking records that belonged to Ricky Ponting. He is not winding down in public. He is picking his formats, protecting his body, and aiming everything at one last World Cup.

For readers who land here from a search, the short version is this: born 5 November 1988, turned 38 on 5 November 2026, Scorpio, jersey number 18, and still very much an active international cricketer — just a selective one now.

Virat Kohli’s Age at Every Big Moment

Kohli’s career reads like a timeline where every age seems to carry a milestone. He was a prodigy at 19, a World Cup winner at 22, a captain at 26, and a record-breaker at 29. The table below puts the headline moments against the age he was when they happened, so you can see how young he was when most of it arrived — and how long he has now been at the top.

Two things stand out from that list. First, the sheer speed of the early years: between 19 and 23, Kohli went from age-group captain to World Cup winner to Test centurion. Second, the spread of the later years: his 35th, 36th, 37th and 38th birthdays each came with a trophy, a retirement, a title or a record. Most players get one golden year. Kohli has had a golden decade and a half, and the milestones have not stopped arriving.

Early Life in Delhi: The Boy Who Lost His Father at 18

Virat Kohli was born on 5 November 1988 in Delhi into a Punjabi Hindu family, and he grew up in Uttam Nagar, a middle-class neighbourhood in West Delhi. His father, Prem Kohli, was a criminal lawyer. His mother, Saroj Kohli, kept the home. He has an elder brother, Vikas, and an elder sister, Bhawna. It was an ordinary Delhi upbringing in most respects — except that the youngest child in the house was obsessed with a bat and a ball from the time he could hold them.

At nine, Kohli joined the West Delhi Cricket Academy, where coach Rajkumar Sharma took charge of his early training. Sharma has spoken many times since about the boy who arrived with more hunger than technique and built the technique around the hunger. The academy years gave Kohli his foundation: the straight bat, the cover drive that would become his signature shot, and a fitness-first attitude that was rare among Indian batters of his generation.

The defining episode of his teenage years came in December 2006. Kohli was 18, playing a Ranji Trophy match for Delhi against Karnataka, when his father died. He learned the news in the middle of the game. The next morning, instead of going home, he returned to the crease and batted for Delhi, scoring 90 and saving the follow-on. It is the story every Kohli profile tells, because it explains so much of what came after: the discipline, the refusal to use emotion as an excuse, and the sense that cricket was the one place where grief could be turned into something useful.

Kohli has said in interviews over the years that his father’s death changed how he saw the game. Before it, cricket was something he loved. After it, cricket was something he owed — to his father, who had driven him to practice and believed in him before anyone else did. He was 18 years old. Within two years he was captaining India at a World Cup and playing for the senior national team.

The Rise: From Under-19 Captain to India’s Main Man

The world first noticed Kohli in early 2008, when he captained India to the Under-19 World Cup title in Malaysia, beating South Africa in a rain-hit final. He was 19, brash, expressive, and already batting like someone who expected to be the best player on the field. Royal Challengers Bengaluru picked him up for the first IPL season that same year on a youth contract — a deal reported at the time at just ₹12 lakh — and he has played for RCB in every IPL season since. No other player has spent his whole IPL career at one franchise the way Kohli has at RCB.

His ODI debut came in August 2008 against Sri Lanka in Dambulla, when he was still 19. The early years were uneven — he was in and out of the side, and his place was never guaranteed — but the first ODI century arrived in December 2009, a 107 against Sri Lanka in Kolkata when he was 20. From there the rise was fast. He made his Test debut against West Indies in Kingston in June 2011, weeks after winning the ODI World Cup with India at the age of 22, and scored his first Test century in Adelaide in January 2012, a 116 against Australia when he was 23.

The 2011 World Cup final at the Wankhede remains one of his favourite memories: India chasing 275 against Sri Lanka, Kohli walking in early after the openers fell, and making 35 in a partnership with Gautam Gambhir that steadied the chase before MS Dhoni finished it. He was the youngest member of that winning side, and the only one of the eleven who would still be playing international cricket fifteen years later.

Captaincy followed. When Dhoni retired from Test cricket midway through the 2014-15 Australia tour, Kohli took over the Test side at 26. He became limited-overs captain in 2017. Under him, India became the No. 1 Test side in the world and reached the final of the first World Test Championship in 2021. The captaincy years also gave him his most complete phase as a batter: between 2016 and 2019 he averaged over 60 in ODIs across long stretches and piled up hundreds at a rate no one in the format had matched. In October 2018, at 29, he became the fastest batter ever to 10,000 ODI runs, reaching the mark in 205 innings and beating Tendulkar’s record of 259.

Then came the lean patch of 2020-22, when the hundreds stopped for almost three years and the questions started. Kohli answered them the way he usually does: with a hundred against Afghanistan at the 2022 Asia Cup, his first in T20Is, and then the unbeaten 82 against Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the T20 World Cup a month later — an innings many call the finest T20 knock ever played. The 2023 ODI World Cup at home brought 765 runs, the most by any batter in a single World Cup edition, including the 49th ODI hundred on his 35th birthday against South Africa and the 50th in the semi-final against New Zealand, which took him past Tendulkar’s tally of 49 ODI centuries.

Virat Kohli at 38: The 2026 Season So Far

If anyone expected 38 to be a quiet year for Kohli, the first week of November put that idea to rest. The New Zealand tour has been the loudest statement of his 38th year so far, and it started the day before his birthday.

On Wednesday 4 November 2026, India opened a five-match ODI series against New Zealand at Eden Park in Auckland. Rain kept interrupting the game, and India were chasing a revised target of 143 in 32 overs under the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method. Rohit Sharma was out for a six-ball duck in the second over, and Kohli walked in early. He reached his fifty in 35 balls — his 80th ODI fifty — and finished on 74 off 51 balls, with 13 fours and a six, at a strike rate of 145.1. India won by five wickets with plenty to spare. Eden Park’s chief executive, Nick Sautner, presented Kohli with a birthday cake after the game.

The innings carried two records with it. Kohli became the first batter in history to score 13,000 ODI runs while batting at No. 3, taking his tally at that position to 13,062 runs from 251 innings. He also drew level with Ricky Ponting for the most ODI runs against New Zealand, with 1,971. Former India opener Aakash Chopra, commentating on the knock, noted that Kohli’s game has shifted in 2026: the strike rate has climbed to around 120 for the year, and he is hitting a six roughly every 28 balls. “The run machine has become an intent machine,” Chopra said.

Three days later, on Saturday 7 November in Wellington, Kohli passed Ponting outright. He needed only one run to do it and managed seven in India’s chase of 135, taking his ODI aggregate against New Zealand to 1,978 runs from 38 innings at an average of 56.51 — with seven centuries and eleven half-centuries against the Black Caps, the most ODI hundreds anyone has scored against them. CricTracker, reporting the Wellington match, noted that Kohli had also become the first batter to record 50 scores of fifty or more in away ODIs.

The wider 2026 picture backs up the birthday-week form. StadiumRant’s count after the Auckland innings showed ten scores of fifty or more in his last 14 ODI innings, including four centuries and six half-centuries. The run included an unbeaten 139 against West Indies in Thiruvananthapuram in September 2026, the innings that took his ODI tally past 15,000 runs, and a 124 against New Zealand at home earlier in the year. The lean years are a long way behind him now.

The IPL season told a similar story. In IPL 2025, Kohli scored 657 runs as Royal Challengers Bengaluru finally won their first title, beating Punjab Kings by six runs in the final at Ahmedabad on 3 June 2025. Kohli made 43 off 35 balls in that final, and the images of him in tears with the trophy — and then hugging his wife Anushka Sharma, who has supported RCB since 2014 — became the defining pictures of the season. It ended an 18-year wait for the franchise and for its one-club man. SportzCraazy reports that RCB went on to win again in IPL 2026, beating Gujarat Titans by five wickets in the final, with Kohli finishing the chase with a 75 not out off 42 balls, including the fastest fifty of his IPL career off 25 balls.

What is striking about Kohli at 38 is not just the runs but the role. He is no longer the captain, no longer the man carrying all three formats, and no longer trying to play every game. He is a specialist now — an ODI batter and an IPL batter — and the specialisation suits him. The body gets rest between assignments, the mind gets a break from the noise, and when he does walk out, he bats like a man with a point to prove.

The Numbers Behind 18 Years at the Top

Kohli’s career numbers, updated after the Wellington ODI on 7 November 2026, place him in a very small group of batters. Sportskeeda’s birthday piece on 5 November 2026 put his ODI ledger at 15,183 runs in 318 matches at 58.84, with 55 centuries and 80 fifties — second only to Tendulkar’s 18,426 ODI runs. SportsDigest, using BCCI figures the same week, put his combined international tally at 28,601 runs in 566 matches at 52.86, with 86 international centuries: 30 in Tests, 55 in ODIs and one in T20Is.

A few notes on that table, because the numbers deserve honest handling. The ODI and Test figures come from Sportskeeda and CricTracker reporting on 5 November 2026, before the Wellington ODI added seven more ODI runs. The T20I runs figure is derived by subtracting the Test and ODI totals from the BCCI’s combined 28,601, so treat it as an arithmetic check rather than a directly reported number. The IPL tally of 8,779 runs comes from Sports Now’s November 2026 report, which also credits Kohli with the most IPL centuries, nine, and the most runs in the competition’s history.

The records that matter most are the ones that took the longest to build. Fifty-five ODI centuries is the most by any batter in the format — Tendulkar’s 49 stood for years as the number no one would touch. Eighty ODI fifties to go with them. The most runs ever scored in ODI chases. The most fifty-plus scores in successful ODI chases: 25 hundreds and 30 fifties. And the chase record that defines him — an ODI average above 58, the highest among batters with anything like his volume of runs, built largely on innings played under lights with a target on the board.

There is also the small matter of the World Cups. Kohli has now won all four of cricket’s major ICC titles with India: the 2011 ODI World Cup, the Champions Trophy in 2013 and again in 2025, and the 2024 T20 World Cup. Only a handful of players in history own that set. The 2025 Champions Trophy win in March 2025 featured a hundred against Pakistan and an 84 in the semi-final against Australia — at 36, in a tournament many thought he might skip.

How Kohli’s Game Has Changed With Age

Watch Kohli bat now and compare it with the Kohli of 2016, and the difference is visible within a few balls. The younger Kohli built innings the same way every time: watchful start, singles and twos, then acceleration once set. The 38-year-old Kohli has added a gear at the top of the innings. In 2026 his ODI strike rate has sat around 120, far above his career rate, and the Auckland 74 was struck at 145.1. He is hitting the ball in the air more, taking on the short ball earlier, and trusting his hands to find gaps that the old Kohli would have waited ten overs to attack.

The change is deliberate. Aakash Chopra’s analysis after the Auckland game pointed out that Kohli is now hitting a six roughly every 28 balls in 2026, a rate that would have looked reckless from him a decade ago. With only ODIs to prepare for, he can train for one tempo instead of three, and the freedom shows. He still runs hard between the wickets — the fitness work that made him famous has not gone anywhere — but the risk profile of his batting has moved up a notch.

What has not changed is the chase. Kohli’s best work has always come with a target to hunt, and the numbers still say so: 25 of his 55 ODI hundreds have come in successful chases, along with 30 fifties, and he passed Tendulkar’s record for the most runs in ODI chases during the Auckland innings, moving to 8,741. The calm he shows with a required rate climbing is the same calm he showed at 25. Age has not dulled it; if anything, the years have made it quieter.

The body has changed too, and Kohli has talked openly about managing it. He has spoken about the discipline of his diet and training for years — the famous shift away from junk food, the gym work, the attention to sleep and recovery — and at 38 that discipline is what keeps him in the side. He no longer plays Test cricket, which spares his knees and back the five-day grind, and he no longer plays T20Is, which spares him the constant travel of bilateral series. The ODI-only schedule is, in effect, a longevity plan, and so far it is working.

The Money at 38: Net Worth, Salary and Business

Kohli’s age matters to his money as much as to his cricket, because 38 is the age when most athletes start thinking about what comes after the game. Kohli started earlier than most. His estimated net worth in 2026 sits in a range of about ₹1,050–1,150 crore, roughly $125–140 million, according to the media estimates published this year. SportsMint’s birthday-week report put it at more than ₹1,000 crore, with several outlets placing it between ₹1,050 crore and ₹1,115 crore. The range matters more than any single number: no one outside Kohli’s own finance team knows the private figure, and different outlets value his business stakes differently.

The income streams behind that range are unusually clear for a cricketer. His IPL salary with Royal Challengers Bengaluru is ₹21 crore a season under the current retention cycle, and his career IPL earnings have crossed ₹200 crore. His BCCI central contract for 2025-26 is Grade B, worth ₹7 crore a year plus ₹6 lakh per ODI appearance. Endorsements are the biggest single engine: he works with more than 30 brands, and reported estimates of his annual endorsement income vary widely — from ₹80–100 crore a year in some counts to ₹150–200 crore or more in others — because the exact values of private deals are never disclosed. Forbes has previously reported his endorsement earnings at more than $20 million a year. His long Puma association, signed in 2017, was reported at the time as a ₹110 crore multi-year deal.

Then there is the brand value, which is a different thing from net worth and often gets mixed up with it. Kroll’s Celebrity Brand Valuation Study 2024 put Kohli’s brand value at $231.1 million, making him India’s most valuable celebrity brand. The Forbes India Showstoppers 2026 list went further, valuing his brand at ₹3,542 crore and ranking him India’s most valuable celebrity ahead of Shah Rukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Brand value is what advertisers would pay for the association, not money in the bank — but it explains why the endorsement queue never shortens, even as he plays fewer matches.

The business portfolio is where Kohli has done his most serious long-term work. One8, his personal lifestyle brand, started in sportswear with Puma and has grown into fragrances, cafes and the One8 Commune restaurant chain across Indian cities. He co-created the fashion brand WROGN in 2014, which has been a mixed story in recent years: Forbes-linked reporting cited by Startupbooted puts WROGN’s losses at ₹75.5 crore in 2025, with accumulated losses of ₹709 crore, a reminder that not every venture in the portfolio is a winner. He has also backed Chisel Fitness and a set of smaller investments across lifestyle, health and food, including the plant-based brand Blue Tribe with his wife. The One8 brand itself was reported as sold to Agilitas in 2025, with Kohli reinvesting ₹40 crore for an ownership stake — a neat summary of his approach: sell, keep a share, stay involved.

For an age article, the point is simple. Kohli’s earning power has never depended on playing every format. It depends on the brand, the businesses and the audience, and all three are still growing at 38. The cricket now serves the brand as much as the brand serves the cricket.

Assets and Lifestyle

Kohli’s property portfolio is reported to include a home in Gurugram valued at around ₹80 crore and a Mumbai apartment valued at around ₹34 crore, according to CricketWinner’s 2026 business roundup. The family has also spent long stretches in London since the birth of their son in 2024, though neither Kohli nor Anushka Sharma has confirmed a permanent move, and reports of a London base should be treated as unconfirmed.

His car collection has been written about for years, and Audis have featured in it throughout — he has been associated with Audi India for a long time, and the brand has been part of his endorsement stable. Beyond that, the honest thing to say is that the details of his garage change with every new endorsement cycle, and the reliable reports focus on the value of the collection rather than a fixed list of models.

The lifestyle that gets the most attention is the disciplined one: the training, the diet, the early nights on tour. Kohli’s fitness transformation in the mid-2010s changed how Indian cricketers train, and at 38 it is still the reason he can field like a 28-year-old and run twos that younger players turn down. That, more than any house or car, is the asset that is still paying him.

Personal Life: Anushka, Vamika and Akaay

Kohli married Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma on 11 December 2017 in a private ceremony in Florence, Italy. They had met in 2013 on the set of a shampoo commercial, and the relationship grew in public over the next four years — through World Cup campaigns, film releases and the constant attention that follows two of India’s most famous people being together.

Their daughter, Vamika, was born on 11 January 2021. Their son, Akaay, was born on 15 February 2024. The couple keep both children largely out of the public eye, and they have asked the media to respect that boundary — a request most outlets now honour. Anushka has been a constant presence at RCB games since 2014, and Kohli credited her after the 2025 IPL title, saying she had stood by the team and by him through eleven years of highs and lows.

Family is also the reason Kohli gives for the choices he makes now. The ODI-only schedule means more time at home between series. The London stays that followed Akaay’s birth were, by most accounts, about giving the children a quieter life away from the constant attention in India. At 38, with two young children and a wife whose own career keeps her busy, the balance between cricket and home is no longer an afterthought. It is the schedule.

How Tall Is Virat Kohli?

Readers who look up Kohli’s age usually ask about his height in the same breath, so here it is: Virat Kohli’s height of 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) puts him a little above average for an Indian man and right in the middle of the range for international batters. He is not tall for a cricketer — fast bowlers tower over him — but his height has never been a limitation. His game is built on balance, quick feet and hand speed, not reach.

The height is worth mentioning here because it feeds into the fitness story. At 5 feet 9 inches and famously lean, Kohli has built his career on agility rather than power, and the fielding standards he set for himself changed what Indian selectors expected from the whole team. The cover drive that opens this article’s photo section needs fast hands and a still head, not long levers. For the full breakdown of his height, how it compares with other cricketers and why it has never held him back, our sister site GuideNetWorth covers it in detail.

Controversies and the Captaincy Question

No honest profile of Kohli skips the captaincy saga of 2021-22, because it shaped the second half of his career. In September 2021, Kohli announced he would step down as India’s T20I captain after the T20 World Cup. In December 2021, the BCCI removed him as ODI captain, replacing him with Rohit Sharma. In January 2022, after India lost the Test series in South Africa, Kohli resigned the Test captaincy himself. The sequence was messy, and it was public: Kohli said he had not been told about the ODI decision in advance, while then-BCCI president Sourav Ganguly said the board had asked him to reconsider stepping down from the T20I role. The two accounts never fully lined up, and the episode remains the sharpest public disagreement of Kohli’s career.

There have been smaller flashpoints too. Kohli has been fined more than once for on-field conduct — including a 25 percent match-fee fine at the 2019 World Cup for excessive appealing against Afghanistan — and his animated celebrations and arguments with opponents have drawn criticism as often as praise. His supporters call it passion; his critics call it a lack of restraint. Both sides have a point, and neither side has ever changed his mind.

What is worth noting at 38 is how little of that heat follows him now. The captaincy is gone, the job is simpler, and the public Kohli of 2026 is a calmer figure — the senior batter who mentors younger players, poses for a birthday cake at Eden Park, and lets the bat do the talking. The fire is still there. It is just aimed at the ball now.

What Comes Next: The 2027 World Cup Question

Every question about Kohli’s age ends in the same place: how much longer? The answer he has given publicly points to one tournament. SportsAdda’s November 2026 profile reports that Kohli has said the 2027 World Cup will be his last. The tournament is scheduled for October-November 2027 in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, which means Kohli will be 38 for most of it and will turn 39 on 5 November 2027, during the event. If he plays it, he will be chasing a second ODI World Cup sixteen years after his first, at an age when almost no batter has ever been a frontline pick.

The road to 2027 runs through the ODI calendar of 2026-27, and the New Zealand series is the first step on it. Between now and then, the questions will be the same ones that follow every ageing great: can the body hold up, can the reflexes stay sharp, and does the hunger survive the comfort of a settled life? The evidence of November 2026 — 74 off 51 on the eve of his 38th birthday, a Ponting record passed three days later — suggests the hunger is intact.

After 2027, the IPL will almost certainly continue — RCB have never had a reason to let him go, and he has never given them one. Coaching, commentary and the One8 business empire all wait in the wings, and Kohli has the profile to succeed at any of them. But none of that is the story right now. The story is a 38-year-old who has already won everything, still turning up in Auckland on a wet Wednesday to chase 143.

How Virat Kohli Compares With His Peers at 38

Age looks different when you put it next to the players Kohli is always measured against. Sachin Tendulkar won his only ODI World Cup in April 2011, weeks before his 38th birthday, and played his last Test at 40. Ricky Ponting, whose ODI record against New Zealand Kohli has just passed, retired from international cricket at 37. Kumar Sangakkara retired at 37. Rahul Dravid played his last Test at 39. Kohli, at 38, is still an automatic pick in ODIs and still breaking the records of players who had already stopped by this age.

The comparison is kind to Kohli, but it needs a caveat: Tendulkar and Dravid were still playing Test cricket at 38, the hardest format on an ageing body, while Kohli has chosen to give Tests up. That is not a criticism — it is the reason he can still bat the way he does in ODIs. The trade he made in May 2025, Tests for longevity in white-ball cricket, is the deal that makes 38 look like 33.

There is one more comparison worth making, and it is with Kohli himself. At 35, he scored 765 runs in a home World Cup. At 36, he won a Champions Trophy. At 37, he won a first IPL title. At 38, he is passing Ponting. The usual arc for a batter — peak, plateau, fade — has not shown up yet. The fade may come, and it may come quickly when it does, as it does for everyone. It has not come yet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Reporting

This article was researched from live reporting published in November 2026, with career figures checked against ESPNcricinfo-sourced profiles and BCCI figures reported the same week. Key sources: ESPNcricinfo, Sportskeeda, CricTracker, SportsAdda, Forbes, Kroll, BCCI and IPL.

How we estimated: Virat Kohli’s net worth is an estimate, not an audited figure. We anchored the range of ₹1,050–1,150 crore (roughly $125–140 million) to the 2026 media estimates published by SportsMint, Startupbooted and other outlets, which cluster around ₹1,050 crore and above, and we publish a range rather than a single number because outlets value his private business stakes differently. His brand value (Kroll 2024: $231.1 million; Forbes India Showstoppers 2026: ₹3,542 crore) is a separate measure of his commercial worth, not his net worth. Career statistics are taken from reporting dated 4–7 November 2026 and will change as he plays more matches. Figures for private deals, endorsement values and property prices are reported estimates and may differ from private reality.