The player draft for the 2023 Pakistan Super League was held on 15 December 2022. Before the draft teams were allowed to retain a maximum of eight players and make transfers.

Ramiz Raja had hinted that the draft would be replaced by an auction, but the format was retained. The PCB announced that Lahore Qalandars will have the first pick.

Each team had the right to exercise one wildcard pick. Each team had a right-to-match card which allowed franchises to buy back one player they had released by paying a set fee in each category:

Babar Azam and a supplementary round pick were traded from Karachi Kings to Peshawar Zalmi in return for Shoaib Malik and Haider Ali.

On 11 November 2022, the retained players' list was announced. The franchises were allowed to retain a maximum of eight players from the previous season. All the franchises fully utilized their quota of player retentions apart from Peshawar Zalmi.

More than 493 foreign players were registered for the draft. For the emerging category, players should be under 23 years of age as of 1 January 2023 and could have either played less than 10 PSL matches in previous seasons or not have been selected in the national squad.

A replacement player draft took place through a conference call on 24 January 2023, in which franchises were also allowed to select two supplementary players. Peshawar had reserved their pick in the first supplementary round and named Khurram Shahzad as their pick. Lahore and Peshawar reserved their picks in the second supplementary round. Islamabad, Multan, Peshawar and Quetta reserved picks in the replacement draft. Further replacements were announced on 7 February 2023.