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Lega Basket Serie A 2026/27 (M)

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Lega Basket Serie A 2026/27 (M) · 81 members

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Lega Basket Serie A 2026/27 (M)

Basketball · 2026/27

The tricolour scudetto is sewn onto the jersey and worn for the next twelve months. Italy has been fighting over it since 1920, and this season sixteen teams will do it across thirty rounds — with an oddity no other major European league can match: the city of Rome puts two different clubs on the same grid.

Olimpia Milano defend the thirty-second scudetto in their history, taken off Reyer Venezia 3-1. The division grows from fifteen teams to sixteen and four names come in — Verona, Scafati and the two Roman clubs — while Brescia, Cremona and Sassari drop out. From 27 September to 9 May: 240 games, then a best-of-five playoff.

Milano against Virtus Bologna is the contest that arranges everything else. The Vu Nere have won two EuroLeagues and have spent a century arguing with Milano over who runs Italian basketball; whoever loses that tie rarely lifts anything.

A century of tricolour

The Italian championship has been played since 1920, which makes it one of the oldest club competitions in European basketball. Its symbol is not a trophy but a piece of stitching: the champion wears the tricolour scudetto on the jersey for the whole of the following season, and in Italy a club is said to 'hold the shield' the way elsewhere it is said to hold the title.

Olimpia Milano lead the count with thirty-two scudetti, more than anyone else. Facing them are the Vu Nere of Virtus Bologna, the club that has won two EuroLeagues and built its identity on arguing with Milano every decade. In between are teams now fighting relegation that were once champions of Europe: Cantù, Varese, Treviso, Reyer Venezia.

That memory weighs. In Italy a sixteen-team league includes half a dozen sides that have played continental finals, and it shows in small arenas with atmospheres that do not match their teams' league position.

The thirty-second

Olimpia Milano won the thirty-second scudetto in their history, beating Umana Reyer Venezia 3-1 in the final. The series was not the stroll the scoreline suggests: Venezia had got there by knocking out Virtus Bologna by that same 3-1 in the semi-finals, having first seen off Bertram Derthona Tortona in five games.

Milano, for their part, opened the playoffs with the bracket's only sweep — 3-0 against UNAhotels Reggio Emilia — and then needed four games to get past Germani Brescia, who arrived from a five-game series win over Pallacanestro Trieste.

The number that sums up the year belongs to Virtus: they went out in the semi-finals after coming through a 3-2 quarter-final against Dolomiti Energia Trento. Three of the seven series were decided in a last game, and the champion was the only team that never lost more than one game in a round until the final.

How 2026/27 arrives

The division grows: from fifteen teams to sixteen, with thirty rounds and 240 games between 27 September and 9 May. Four names come in — Tezenis Verona, Givova Scafati and two Roman clubs, BC Roma Spqr and Maxima Roma — while Germani Brescia, Vanoli Cremona and Banco di Sardegna Sassari drop out.

Rome fielding two teams in the same league is the oddity of the season, and it is no small thing in a city that had gone years without a stable top-flight club. Milano defend with the country's most expensive roster; Virtus Bologna are once again the designated rival; Reyer Venezia arrive from losing a final, and Trento and Tortona have shown they know how to win series against the big clubs.

The calendar squeezes harder than in other European leagues: Milano, Virtus and Venezia juggle Serie A with midweek continental games, and by March that gets paid for.

How it is decided

Thirty rounds, home and away, and then an eight-team playoff in which all three rounds are best-of-five. The champion needs nine wins in May after thirty games since September, and the higher regular-season seed opens and closes every series at home.

That turns the final regular-season round into more than a formality: the difference between finishing fourth and fifth is playing game five at home or away, and in recent seasons that has decided more ties than any winter signing.

At the bottom, teams go down to Serie A2, with the wrinkle that the number of places has changed several times in the last decade depending on entries and licences — something that in Italy is part of the landscape: more than once the division has started with one team fewer than planned. This year sixteen line up, one more than last season.

2025/26 champion