NBA Cup 2026: how the format, groups and tie-breakers work
The NBA Cup 2026 starts October 30. How the six groups, wild cards, tie-breakers and knockout rounds work, plus prize money and the December 11 final.
Why it matters
NBA Cup results change the regular-season standings and pay players real prize money, and the tie-breakers decide many groups, so knowing the rules makes November's results much easier to read.
Thirty NBA teams start playing for a trophy on Friday, October 30, and the game that settles it on December 11 will be played in a college gym in Indianapolis that opened in 1928 and seats about 9,100 people. The NBA Cup 2026, the league’s in-season tournament, runs inside the regular season: group games through November, knockout games in early December, and a final that is the only Cup game not counted in the standings.
Quick answer: The 30 teams are split into six groups of five, three per conference. Each team plays its four group rivals once between October 30 and November 27. The six group winners and one wild card per conference (the best second-placed team) reach the quarterfinals on December 4 and 5, then the semifinals on December 8 and 9, and the final on December 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Every game except the final counts toward the 82-game regular season.
In this article:
- Who is in each group
- When the Cup Nights are
- How teams qualify, and the tie-breakers
- The knockout rounds and the final
- Prize money and past winners
- Whether the Cup is working
Who is in each NBA Cup 2026 group?
Groups stay inside each conference, so Eastern teams meet only Eastern teams until the final. The league published these groups with its schedule on August 12, 2026.
| Group | Teams |
|---|---|
| East A | Brooklyn Nets, Detroit Pistons, Milwaukee Bucks, Orlando Magic, Toronto Raptors |
| East B | Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers |
| East C | Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, Charlotte Hornets, Chicago Bulls, Washington Wizards |
| West A | Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz |
| West B | LA Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans, Oklahoma City Thunder |
| West C | Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs |
| Source: NBA.com, Fox Sports and Bleacher Report, 2026. |
Some draws have an edge to them. East B holds the New York Knicks, who won the 2025 Cup and then the 2026 NBA championship, along with the Indiana Pacers, the losing finalists in the first Cup in 2023. West C puts the San Antonio Spurs, beaten by New York in both of those finals, in with the Los Angeles Lakers, the first Cup winners, and the Golden State Warriors.
When are the NBA Cup Nights?
Group games are played on fixed “Cup Nights”: every Friday from October 30 to November 27, plus Tuesday, November 24 and Wednesday, November 25, the two nights before the US Thanksgiving holiday. Each team plays four group games, two at home and two away. The league says the group stage has 60 games, 15 of them on national television across Prime Video, NBC and Peacock, and ESPN.
- 30 Oct 2026: Group play opens on the first Cup Night.
- 6, 13 and 20 Nov 2026: Friday Cup Nights.
- 24, 25 and 27 Nov 2026: The last three Cup Nights; groups and wild cards are settled.
- 4 and 5 Dec 2026: Quarterfinals in NBA team arenas.
- 8 and 9 Dec 2026: Semifinals at the higher seed’s arena.
- 11 Dec 2026: Final at Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis.
Viewers outside North America should watch the clock. US clocks go back one hour on November 1, when daylight saving time ends, so a 7:30 p.m. ET tip-off on October 30 is 23:30 GMT, while the same tip-off from November 6 onward is 00:30 GMT the next day. As of October 27, 2026, the league had not announced a start time for the final; Indianapolis is on Eastern Time, so the GMT conversion is the same five hours.
How do teams qualify for the quarterfinals?
Eight teams go through, four from each conference: the three group winners and one wild card. The wild card is the runner-up with the best group record among the three second-placed teams in that conference. Ties inside a group are broken first, and only then is the wild card worked out.
With four games each, ties are routine. Two or three teams finishing 3-1 in the same group is an ordinary outcome, which is why this competition leans on its tie-breakers far more than the regular season does.
NBA Cup tie-breakers, in order
The NBA applies these steps in sequence until the tie is broken:
- Compare head-to-head results in group play between the tied teams.
- Compare point differential across all group games. A game that went to overtime counts as zero for both teams.
- Compare total points scored in group games, leaving out any points scored in overtime.
- Check last season’s record, meaning the 2025-26 regular season.
- Hold a random draw if the teams are still level.
For a tied wild-card race, the same list applies without step 1, since the teams came from different groups and may never have met.
The overtime rule catches people out. A team that wins by two after an extra period banks no margin from that game at all, exactly like the team it beat. Only margin built in the first 48 minutes moves the table.
What happens in the knockout rounds?
In each conference, the three group winners and the wild card are seeded by group record. The two best records host the quarterfinals on December 4 and 5, with the top seed playing the wild card at home. The semifinals follow on December 8 and 9 at the higher seed’s arena, and every knockout game streams on Prime Video in the US.
That is a change. From 2023 to 2025 the semifinals and final were all played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The league moved the semifinals into team markets, and on June 30, 2026 it named Hinkle Fieldhouse, home of Butler University’s basketball team, as the venue for the December 11 final. The Associated Press reported that Commissioner Adam Silver wanted the final to go to storied college arenas. Hinkle hosted the 1954 Indiana high school championship game that inspired the film Hoosiers.
Do NBA Cup games count in the regular season?
All of them do except the final. Of the 67 Cup games, 66 go into the standings, and every team still plays 82 regular-season games.
The schedule has gaps built in to make that work. While the knockout rounds are played, the 22 teams that did not qualify each play two regular-season games on the off days of December 6 and 7 and December 9 and 10. The four quarterfinal losers in each conference play each other on December 7, 9 or 10. The two finalists end up playing 83 games in all, because the final sits outside the 82.
How much prize money do NBA Cup players get?
The prize pool goes only to players on teams that reach the knockout rounds, and the share grows with each round. As of October 27, 2026, the NBA had not published the 2026 amounts. The 2025 figures, per player, were:
| Finish | Per player, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Champion | $530,933 |
| Runner-up | $212,373 |
| Semifinal loser | $106,187 |
| Quarterfinal loser | $53,093 |
| Source: CBS Sports and the Associated Press, December 2025. |
Players on two-way contracts, who split time between the NBA and its development league, received half. CBS Sports reported that the amounts rise each year with league revenue under the 2023 labor agreement with the players’ union; the champions’ share was $500,000 in 2023 and $514,971 in 2024. For a player on a rookie or minimum contract, the champions’ share is a large slice of a season’s pay.
Who has won the NBA Cup?
| Year | Final | Tournament MVP |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Los Angeles Lakers 123, Indiana Pacers 109 | LeBron James |
| 2024 | Milwaukee Bucks 97, Oklahoma City Thunder 81 | Giannis Antetokounmpo |
| 2025 | New York Knicks 124, San Antonio Spurs 113 | Jalen Brunson |
| Source: Fox Sports, Wikipedia and NBA.com, 2026. All three finals were played at T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas. |
No team has won it twice. The Knicks’ 2025 run became the first Cup and NBA title double in the same season when they beat the same Spurs 4-1 in the NBA Finals in June 2026.
Why did the NBA create the Cup?
Silver talked publicly about a midseason tournament as early as May 2019, pointing to the cup competitions of European soccer as a model. The problem he wanted to solve was November and December: long stretches of regular-season games that matter little, played while American football dominates US sports television. A trophy, prize money and a short knockout bracket were meant to give those weeks stakes.
The league announced the format in July 2023 and played the first edition that autumn as the In-Season Tournament. It became the Emirates NBA Cup after the airline signed a naming deal in February 2024.
Is the NBA Cup working?
The ratings answer is mixed, and it depends on which number you read.
The first final, on ABC in 2023, averaged 4.58 million US viewers. The 2024 final on ABC drew 2.99 million and the 2025 final, the first on Prime Video, drew 3.07 million, according to Sports Media Watch and Awful Announcing. Sports Media Watch noted that the small rise could be explained by changes in how Nielsen measures audiences, though viewing among adults aged 18 to 34 rose 51%.
The league prefers a different figure: it said more than 40 million viewers watched 2025 group play across its three partners, up 90% from 2024. That is a count of people who saw any group game, not an average audience for one game, so it cannot be set against the final numbers.
The stronger case is on the court. The 2024 losing finalist, Oklahoma City, won the next NBA title, and the 2025 Cup final turned out to be a preview of the 2026 NBA Finals. Teams evidently take it seriously.
The tie-breakers remain the sore point. Yahoo Sports reported in December 2023 that the players’ union had heard from many players who disliked point differential as a tie-breaker, since it rewards running up the score in games already won. Ideas raised at the time included a cap on the margin per game. Point differential is still step two in 2026.
Watch for: On November 24, 25 and 27, read the point differential column in each group table, not only wins and losses. When runners-up in different groups of the same conference finish on the same record, head-to-head drops out and margin decides the wild card, so a runner-up’s blowout win in early November can be what puts it through. The final’s tip-off time is the other thing to look for before December 11.
