2025–26 Basketball Champions League


The 2025–26 Basketball Champions League will be the 10th season of the Basketball Champions League, a European professional basketball competition for clubs launched by FIBA.
Unicaja are the defending champions.

Team allocation

A total of 53 teams from 30 of the 50 FIBA Europe member associations are set to participate in the 2025–26 Basketball Champions League. The country ranking based on the country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each country:
  • All countries, if they entered, each have at least one team qualify.
  • The winners of the 2024–25 Basketball Champions League are given an additional entry if they do not qualify for the 2025–26 Basketball Champions League through their domestic league.
  • The organiser may grant access to the League through the attribution of up to 4 invitations (wild cards) to the Regular Season or to the Qualification Rounds.
  • If one or more clubs do not use their right to participate in the Basketball Champions League, the organiser may decide to allocate the respective place to other clubs of the same or other country.

Country ranking

.It takes into account their performance from 2022–23 to 2024–25.

Teams

The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:
  • TH: Title holders
  • 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.: League positions of the previous season
;Notes

Referees

A total of 54 officials are set to work on the 2025–26 season in Basketball Champions League: After the 2024–25 season, twelve referees were replaced by new ones. Newcomers are marked by *.

Round and draw dates

The schedule of the competition will be as follows.

Qualifying rounds

The 24 teams will face in three [|qualifying round tournaments], one of which belong to the Champions Path, which contains the domestic league champions, and the other two to the League Path, which contains the rest of the teams that vie for qualify to the [|regular season]. In each path, teams will be seeded ordered by the club ranking and by the country ranking for clubs that have not yet participated in the competition. The three winners of the finals will then qualify for the regular season and will join the 29 directly qualified teams in the main draw. The rest of the teams will qualify, if they apply, to the FIBA Europe Cup.

Draw

The draw for the qualifying rounds was held on 2 July 2025 at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Champions path


League path


Tournament 1

The tournament 1 will be played on September 21–25, 2025.
Source:

Tournament 2

The tournament 2 will be played on September 19–23, 2025.
Source:

Tournament 3

The tournament 3 will be played on September 20–24, 2025.
Source:

Regular season

The regular season will be played by 32 teams divided into eight groups of four in which 29 teams receive direct spots plus the three qualifying round tournaments winners. The regular season will begin on 7 October and will conclude on 17 December 2025. In each group, teams will play against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format where the eight group winners from each regular season group will qualify directly to the round of 16. Moreover, the second-placed and third-placed will qualify to the play-ins, where the series winners will qualify for the round of 16, while the remanining last-placed teams will be eliminated after the regular season.
A minimum of 18 countries will be represented in the regular season which will involve up to nine domestic league champions. Continental powerhouses like Alba Berlin, Joventut Badalona and Dreamland Gran Canaria will join the league after their previous stage in Euroleague Basketball competitions, others like Karditsa Iaponiki, Mersin and Trapani Shark will make their debut appearance in international competitions.

Play-ins

The Play-ins will take place from 6 to 14 January 2026. The teams classified in second and third place in their respective groups of Basketball Champions League, went to the Play-ins. The winners will advance to the round of 16. First legs will be played on 6 January, second legs on 8 January and if required, third legs will be played on 13–14 January.

Round of 16

The Round of 16 will take place from January 20 until March 18, 2026. The groups will be formed by the winners of each Regular Season Group and by eight Play-Ins winners. The 16 teams will be divided in 4 groups, 4 teams each. The first two of each groups advance to the quarter-finals.