What Is the NBA Cup? Format, Dates, Tiebreakers and Past Winners

The NBA Cup, officially the Emirates NBA Cup, is a tournament the NBA plays inside its regular season: all 30 teams play four group games in November, eight teams advance to single-elimination knockout rounds in December, and the last two teams meet in a winner-take-all championship game. Every Cup game except the championship also counts as a normal regular-season game, so the tournament sits on top of the 82-game schedule rather than adding to it.

The league launched it in the 2023-24 season as the NBA In-Season Tournament, and it took the Emirates name when the airline became its title partner the following year. This guide explains the 2026 edition, which belongs to the 2026-27 season: the dates, how the groups were drawn, the tiebreakers (where point differential matters more than in any other part of the NBA season), the knockout bracket, the move of the final from Las Vegas to Indianapolis, and every winner so far. All format details come from NBA.com and NBA Communications as of November 2026.

NBA Cup 2026 dates at a glance

The 2026 Emirates NBA Cup runs from Friday, October 30 to Friday, December 11, 2026. The NBA's published key dates are:

• Group play: October 30 through November 27, on what the league calls Cup Nights. Those are the Fridays of October 30 and November 6, 13, 20 and 27, plus Tuesday, November 24 and Wednesday, November 25.
• Quarterfinals: Friday, December 4 and Saturday, December 5, in NBA team markets.
• Semifinals: Tuesday, December 8 and/or Wednesday, December 9, at the arena of the higher seed.
• Championship: Friday, December 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

The first Cup Night opened with a Prime Video doubleheader, New York at Philadelphia and the Lakers at Golden State, and group play closes on Black Friday with Miami at New York and the Lakers at San Antonio. In total there are 60 group games, 15 of them on national television across Prime Video, NBC and ESPN. Every knockout game, the championship included, streams on Prime Video.

Group play: six groups of five teams

The 30 teams are split into six groups of five, three groups in each conference. Groups are not fixed from year to year. Before each edition the league sorts every conference into five pots based on the previous season's record, then draws one team from each pot into each group. For 2026 the pots used 2025-26 records:

• Pot 1: the three best records in the conference.
• Pot 2: fourth to sixth.
• Pot 3: seventh to ninth.
• Pot 4: tenth to twelfth.
• Pot 5: thirteenth to fifteenth.

That way each group gets one strong team, one weak team and three in between, at least on paper. The 2026 groups were revealed on June 30:

• West Group A: Dallas, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, Utah.
• West Group B: LA Clippers, Memphis, Minnesota, New Orleans, Oklahoma City.
• West Group C: Golden State, LA Lakers, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio.
• East Group A: Brooklyn, Detroit, Milwaukee, Orlando, Toronto.
• East Group B: Cleveland, Indiana, Miami, New York, Philadelphia.
• East Group C: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Washington.

Each team plays the other four teams in its group once, two games at home and two on the road. That is 10 games per group and 60 in all (6 groups x 10 games). Only the winner of each group is guaranteed a place in the knockout rounds, which is why a single November loss can matter so much.

Tiebreakers: why point differential matters

With only four games each, ties in the group standings are common. The 2026 rules break them in this order:

• Head-to-head record in group play.
• Point differential in group play (points scored minus points allowed).
• Total points scored in group play.
• Regular-season record from the previous season (2025-26 for this edition).
• A random drawing.

One detail changes how the numbers add up: overtime does not count. A game that goes to overtime is treated as a point differential of zero for both teams, and points scored in overtime are left out of the points-scored tiebreaker. In a regular-season game, a win is simply a win. In a Cup group game, winning by 25 instead of 5 can decide who goes through, so teams have a reason to keep scoring even in games that already look settled.

The wild card race

Eight teams reach the knockout rounds: the six group winners plus one wild card in each conference. The wild card is the second-place team with the best group-play record in its conference. If second-place teams are tied, the same tiebreakers apply except head-to-head, since teams from different groups have not played each other in the Cup. Ties inside each group are settled first, so a team has to be the official runner-up in its own group before it can be compared with the other two runners-up.

Because records are compared first, a 3-1 runner-up always ranks ahead of a 2-2 runner-up in the wild card race. When two or three runners-up all finish 3-1, the wild card usually comes down to point differential.

Knockout rounds and the final in Indianapolis

From the quarterfinals on, the Cup is single elimination: lose once and you are out. In each conference the two qualifiers with the best group-play records host the quarterfinals, and the top seed plays the wild card. Seeding ties use the same tiebreakers. So the bracket looks like this in each conference:

• Quarterfinal: top seed vs. wild card, at the top seed.
• Quarterfinal: the other two group winners, at the better-seeded team.
• Semifinal: the two quarterfinal winners, at the higher seed's arena.
• Championship: the East semifinal winner against the West semifinal winner.

The venues are the big change for 2026. In the first three editions the semifinals and the championship were all played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Starting with the 2026-27 season the semifinals move to the home arena of the higher seed, and the championship moves to Hinkle Fieldhouse, Butler University's arena in Indianapolis. Hinkle opened in 1928, seats 9,100 after renovation, and hosted the 1954 Indiana high school final won by tiny Milan High School, the story loosely retold in the film Hoosiers. The NBA describes the move as part of a multiyear plan to take the championship to historic basketball venues, which suggests the location may keep changing in future years.

How Cup games fit into the 82-game season

This is the part that confuses most fans. The NBA Cup does not add a separate set of games. Group games, quarterfinals and semifinals are regular-season games that count in the standings like any other. Only the championship game does not count, because it sits outside the regular season.

The arithmetic for the 2026 edition:

• Group play: 30 teams x 4 games / 2 teams per game = 60 games.
• Knockout rounds: 4 quarterfinals + 2 semifinals + 1 championship = 7 games.
• Total Cup games: 60 + 7 = 67. Games that count in the standings: 67 - 1 = 66.

The schedule is built around this. Eighty games of each team's season are set before the season starts, and the last two depend on the Cup. Teams that reach the knockout rounds use those two slots for the quarterfinal and, if they win, the semifinal. The 22 teams that miss the knockout rounds instead play two extra regular-season games in the December window, and the four quarterfinal losers are paired up for one more regular-season game against each other. Either way, every team finishes with 82 regular-season games.

The two finalists are the exception. They play their 82 regular-season games plus the championship, so each plays 83 games before the playoffs, with the 83rd not counting toward the standings. For the full breakdown of the regular season, see how many games are in an NBA season.

Courts, prize money and the Cup MVP

Cup games are easy to spot on television because they are played on custom courts. The idea dates from the 2023 debut, when the league introduced special tournament courts for all 30 teams, and the NBA's 2026 announcement says games will again be played on custom-designed, fully painted floors. For 2026:

• Each team's wordmark is mirrored on both sides of the court.
• The host team's primary logo sits at center court, and the Cup trophy appears at center court and in the paint.
• Court colors are chosen to contrast with the home team's Statement Edition uniform.
• The tagline "30 Teams. 8 Advance. 1 Champion." appears near the corner three-point line, new for this year.

The NBA says these courts are used for group play, the quarterfinals and the semifinals. Its announcement does not describe the floor for the championship at Hinkle.

The prize money goes to players, not teams. The NBA's current tournament guide says a prize pool is paid to players on teams that reach the knockout rounds, with bigger shares the further a team goes, but it does not publish 2026 amounts. For the first edition in 2023, the league's announced amounts per player were:

• Champions: $500,000.
• Losing finalists: $200,000.
• Semifinal losers: $100,000.
• Quarterfinal losers: $50,000.

The winning team lifts the NBA Cup trophy, and after the championship a media panel names a tournament MVP and an All-Tournament Team based on both group play and the knockout rounds.

NBA Cup history and winners since 2023

Three editions have been completed, all with the final in Las Vegas:

• 2023 (2023-24 season, as the NBA In-Season Tournament): the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Indiana Pacers 123-109 on December 9, 2023. LeBron James was the first tournament MVP.
• 2024 (2024-25 season, the first as the Emirates NBA Cup): the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 97-81 on December 17, 2024. Giannis Antetokounmpo was MVP after a final in which he had 26 points, 19 rebounds and 10 assists, a triple-double.
• 2025 (2025-26 season): the New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 124-113 on December 16, 2025. Jalen Brunson was MVP.

A few patterns stand out. Every final so far has matched an East team against a West team, which the bracket guarantees. The final date has moved around, from a Saturday in 2023 to Tuesdays in 2024 and 2025 and now a Friday in 2026. The basic idea has not changed since 2023: group play in November, an eight-team knockout bracket in December and a championship that sits outside the standings. What changed for 2026 is where the last two rounds are played.

The 2026 edition is in progress as of early November, and its champion will be crowned at Hinkle Fieldhouse on December 11.

NBA Cup quick reference

The whole tournament on one screen, for the 2026-27 season:

• 30 teams, six groups of five (three per conference), drawn from pots based on last season's records.
• 4 group games per team, two home and two away, on Cup Nights from October 30 to November 27.
• Tiebreakers: head-to-head, point differential, points scored, previous season's record, random draw. Overtime counts as zero.
• 8 teams advance: six group winners and one wild card per conference.
• Quarterfinals December 4-5 and semifinals December 8-9, both in NBA team markets.
• Championship on Friday, December 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis.
• 67 Cup games, 66 of them count in the standings. Every team still plays 82 regular-season games; the two finalists play 83 games in total.

If you are new to the NBA, pair this with how long an NBA game lasts, which explains the quarters and overtime periods behind those point differential numbers.