Liga ABA 2026/27 (M)

The Yugoslav league played its last season in 1991-92. What remained afterwards were six national championships far too small for clubs that had competed across Europe: Partizan, Crvena zvezda, Cibona, Budućnost and Olimpija suddenly found themselves winning leagues with four rivals. The ABA was founded in 2001 for exactly that reason — to give them back a competition the size they already were.

The first was won by Union Olimpija of Ljubljana, who beat Krka 73-59 in the 2002 final. Since then the honours have gone back where they used to go: Partizan hold 8 titles and Crvena zvezda 7, meaning Belgrade takes fifteen of the twenty-five editions. FMP have 2, and Cibona, Budućnost, Vršac and Olimpija themselves one apiece.

And two names on that list belong to no former Yugoslav country at all: Maccabi Tel Aviv and Dubai Basketball. A league created so as not to lose its clubs ended up attractive enough that others came from outside to win it.

BC Dubai won the 2026 title and closed it in the worst possible place to do so: in Belgrade, against Partizan, in game four of the final. On 12 June they took the series 3-1 with an 83-81 win decided in the closing minutes, having lost the previous game on the same floor 84-70.

They had already been the best through the regular phase: Dubai finished with the league's best record. That is no small thing in a competition where the trips are long and the arenas of Belgrade, Zagreb and Podgorica are among the hardest on the continent for a visitor.

At the other end, KK Split finished with the worst record of all. Between those two extremes sits what makes this league particular: a club from the Emirates lifting a trophy created for the heirs of Yugoslav basketball, and lifting it on the floor of the club that has won it most.

The season starts on 25 September 2026 and brings the biggest change in years: the league grows to twenty clubs, split into two groups of ten. That is 180 regular-phase games, and for the first time a club can spend a whole autumn without meeting half the competition.

Dubai defend the title. Across from them, the two from Belgrade: Partizan, who lost the final at home and remain the most decorated club in the competition, and Crvena zvezda, who treat every round like the derby because in this league it usually turns out to be one. Behind them come Cedevita Olimpija of Ljubljana, Budućnost of Podgorica and Cibona of Zagreb — the other three capitals of the original map.

And there are names that were not there in 2001: BC Vienna, Slovan Bratislava and U-Banca Transilvania of Cluj-Napoca. A league created for six former Yugoslav countries now plays with clubs from Austria, Slovakia, Romania and the Emirates.

This is not a single-table league, and mistaking it for one is the easiest error to make here. The twenty clubs are split into two groups of ten and play home and away inside their group. That is only the first half of the year.

Then the competition splits in two: a championship round and a relegation round, and teams arrive carrying the points they earned in their group. That detail changes everything. An October defeat still weighs in March, because the slate is not wiped when the phase changes; and a club that starts badly does not get a clean second chance, but a climb with the ballast still attached.

The top block produces the eight for the play-off, and there the series are short: quarter-finals and semi-finals best-of-three, the final best-of-five. With that format a champion may need barely eleven games from the moment the bracket starts — which is why a seven-month regular phase mostly decides how much of an advantage you carry into the three weeks that matter.