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EuroLiga 2026/27 (M)

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EuroLiga 2026/27 (M) · 85 members

Read what the competition is about and join whenever you like to start predicting.

📋 Overview

EuroLiga 2026/27 (M)

Basketball · 2026/27

The aristocracy of European basketball fits into a single competition: Real Madrid, Barça, Panathinaikos, Olympiacos and Fenerbahçe meet every week in arenas on the edge of hysteria, from Athens' OAKA to Belgrade's Štark Arena. One ticket, one trophy and a finale unlike any other on the continent: the Final Four.

The 2026/27 season gathers 20 clubs in a 38-round home-and-away regular season, with Olympiacos as reigning champion. The best fight to skip the play-in and storm the best-of-five quarterfinals; the four survivors meet at a single-game Final Four where the title is settled over one weekend in May, no safety net.

And above all, the Greek derby. Olympiacos and Panathinaikos bring a rivalry to the court that transcends sport, the fiercest in Europe. When Piraeus and Athens face off, the whole continent stops to watch. Do you dare say who lifts the cup?

The divorce that created it

In May 2001 Europe had two basketball champions at once. Maccabi Tel Aviv lifted FIBA's SuproLeague; Kinder Bologna lifted the EuroLeague that ULEB had just founded. The schism grew out of paperwork: FIBA had been using the "EuroLeague" name since 1996 without ever trademarking it, and the clubs took it. A year later the two competitions merged into the one that survived.

That standoff produced the EuroLeague as it is played today: the clubs govern it themselves, which is why you do not get in by winning your domestic league. Twelve teams — Real Madrid, Barcelona, Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Fenerbahce, Maccabi, Baskonia, Anadolu Efes, Zalgiris, Olimpia Milan, ASVEL and Bayern — hold long-term licences and a guaranteed berth; the other eight places are handed out as wild cards lasting one to five years. The model has lived through years of lawsuits and friction with FIBA, which never fully accepted losing control of European club basketball.

Real Madrid tops the roll of honour with eleven titles, ahead of CSKA Moscow on eight and Panathinaikos on seven. Olympiacos, with four, is the most recent to add to the tally.

The year the top seed finally won

No regular-season leader had ever lifted the trophy. Olympiacos broke that record in 2026: they finished top at 26-12 and closed the job almost at home, because the Final Four was played at Athens' Telekom Center from 22 to 24 May.

In the semifinal they ran over Fenerbahce 79-61. In the final they held off Real Madrid, 92-85, a side that arrived flying after a 105-90 demolition of Valencia Basket. Evan Fournier, Final Four MVP, ended thirteen years of drought: the Piraeus club had not won since 2013 and added a fourth continental title.

The shock came from Valencia. Seeded second at 25-13, the taronja side knocked out Panathinaikos in a quarterfinal that stretched to a fifth game, 3-2, and reached the first Final Four in their history. Zalgiris and Hapoel Tel Aviv rounded out a top six with two unfamiliar guests, and AS Monaco were swept aside by Olympiacos themselves. It was also the second straight edition without a third-place game: scrapped, the weekend now runs to three fixtures.

How 2026/27 arrives

Dubai Basketball host Real Madrid on 24 September, and that single fixture sums up where the competition stands: a club founded in 2023, holding a five-year wild card, opening the season against the team with eleven titles.

Besiktas return to the continental elite by an unlikely route. They lost the EuroCup final, but the winners, JL Bourg-en-Bresse, could not take up the place for financial reasons and the Istanbul club inherited the ticket in late June. Going the other way, AS Monaco drop to the EuroCup a year after reaching the quarterfinals. The rest of the field repeats: twenty teams, from Kaunas to Tel Aviv and from Paris to Belgrade.

The contenders fit on one hand. Olympiacos defend the crown; Real Madrid arrive still stung by that 92-85; Panathinaikos, champions in 2024, want back into the Final Four that slipped away on home soil; Fenerbahce, champions in 2025 and semifinalists in 2026, are still there. Behind them, Valencia and Hapoel Tel Aviv have already shown they can survive 38 rounds. The season closes on 16 April 2027.

How it is decided

Twenty teams, a single table and 38 rounds home and away: everyone plays everyone, no groups, no conferences. On 16 April 2027 the standings hand out the tickets. The top six go straight to the quarterfinals. Seventh through tenth fight over the two remaining places in the Play-In, two days of single-elimination set for 20 and 23 April. Eleventh through twentieth are finished for the year.

The quarterfinals are best-of-five, from 27 April to 12 May, with home advantage for the better seed: first to three wins goes through. There are no two-legged ties and no points aggregate. That is where the long game ends, because the four survivors travel to the Final Four, where the title is settled in single games at a neutral venue chosen years in advance: two semifinals, a rest day and the final, and no third-place game any more.

That neutral venue stopped being strictly European some time ago. In May 2025 the Final Four was played at Abu Dhabi's Etihad Arena, the first held outside the continent, and Fenerbahce won it.

2025/26 champion