Liga ACB 2026/27 (M)

Six teams contested the first Liga Nacional in 1957 and Real Madrid won it, then built a stranglehold hard to overstate: twenty-two titles before the competition changed hands. In 1983 the clubs formed the Asociación de Clubes de Baloncesto and took the league with them; it has carried their initials — and a playoff — ever since.

The spoils remain narrowly shared. Real Madrid have 38 league titles and Barça 19; far behind, Joventut and Baskonia with four apiece, Valencia with two, and a single one each for Unicaja in 2006 and Manresa in 1998 — the last club to add a new name to the honours list. Seven champions in sixty-nine seasons.

That concentration explains the format: the regular season sorts, the playoff decides, which is why the ACB's great nights tend to fall in May and June, when a best-of-five can undo eight months of work.

Real Madrid finished top of the regular season and never reached the semifinals. La Laguna Tenerife took the opener at the WiZink by a single point (97-98), absorbed a 83-118 hammering on the island, and returned to Madrid to close the series 95-107 — the league leaders out in the quarterfinals.

On the other side of the bracket, Valencia Basket climbed quietly: past Surne Bilbao, then a 3-0 sweep of Joventut whose first game finished 118-117, and into a final against Barça that began in the worst possible way, losing at home by one (112-113). They won the next three: 102-75 at the Fonteta, 88-80 at the Palau, and an 84-108 on 24 June settled by a 0-12 run in the second quarter. Jean Montero: 23 points and Finals MVP.

It was the club's second league title, nine years after the first, in a season that also brought the Supercopa and a EuroLeague Final Four.

The calendar opens before the league does: the Supercopa Endesa is played in Badalona on 19-20 September, with the first round arriving the weekend of the 26th. There are 34 rounds to May, three of them midweek and circled in red — 29-30 December, 26-27 January and 4-5 May — which in a league this tight at the top tend to cost more than they look.

The bottom of the roster changes. Covirán Granada and Dreamland Gran Canaria went down, the latter after a 10-24 season decided on the final matchday; Leyma Coruña and Monbus Obradoiro come up. With Río Breogán already established, the season will feature three Galician clubs in the top flight.

At the top the script writes itself: Valencia defend, Barça arrive from losing a final they had in hand, and Real Madrid want to forget a quarterfinal they never saw coming. Behind them, the usual names — Unicaja, Baskonia, Tenerife, Joventut — who in this league need little more than one good series.

The eighteen teams play a double round-robin, and everything comes out of that single table: the top eight go to the playoffs and the bottom club is relegated to Primera FEB. There are no conferences or groups; regular-season order hands out home-court advantage, which in a short series is worth almost as much as the roster.

The playoff changes length as it goes: quarterfinals are best-of-three — two bad nights and you are out, as Madrid found in June — while semifinals and the final are best-of-five. The asymmetry is deliberate: it rewards consistency over the long stretch and punishes any lapse in the short one.

Don't confuse this league with the other two dates on the Spanish calendar: September's Supercopa and February's Copa del Rey are single-elimination and keep their own honours. Here, to be champion, you must win eight months and then three series.