What Is the NBA Cup? 2026 Format, Dates and Standings Explained

What is the NBA Cup? It is an in-season competition that gives NBA teams another trophy to pursue while the regular season continues. The league's official rules guide separates it into group play and knockout rounds. The easiest way to follow it is to distinguish a team's Cup record from its overall season record: many games contribute to both, but those records answer different questions.

How do teams reach the knockout rounds?

All 30 teams enter six groups of five within their respective conferences. Each plays four group games, two at home and two away. Six group winners advance, joined by one second-place wild card from each conference. Those eight teams then face single-elimination quarterfinals, semifinals and a championship game.

A strong overall start to the NBA season is therefore different from qualification. The relevant results are the designated group games. Equally, finishing second does not automatically secure a place: that team is competing with the other runners-up in its own conference for one wild-card berth.

Does the Cup change regular-season standings?

The official rules count group games, quarterfinals and semifinals toward the regular season. The championship is the exception: its result and player or team performances do not enter regular-season records or statistics. Every team still has an 82-game regular-season schedule.

Think of the early Cup games as serving two purposes. A result can help a team in the season standings and in the shorter tournament at the same time. That does not turn the Cup trophy into the NBA's season-ending championship. It is a separate competition, with a different route and a much smaller set of qualifying results.

When are the 2026 games?

The official key-dates page lists group-play nights on October 30 and November 6, 13, 20, 24, 25 and 27. Quarterfinals are December 4–5, with semifinals December 8 and/or 9. The final is scheduled for December 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

Those are the dates in the league's published schedule. For overseas viewing, check the individual game's listed time and your local date rather than assuming an American evening game falls on the same calendar day. The schedule page supplies times marked ET; it should also be consulted for the specific matchup rather than treating every Cup night as a game for every team.

What should you check when teams are tied?

The rules begin within-group ties with head-to-head results, then point differential and total points. Overtime points are excluded from the latter two measures; an overtime game's differential is zero. Wild-card ties omit the head-to-head step.

That makes a level win-loss record a starting point, rather than a complete qualification answer. Consult the ordered rules before comparing scores. This guide explains the format; it does not offer live standings, betting selections or a forecast. The league's October 30 media-predictions feature is explicitly a collection of opinions, not confirmation of which teams have advanced.

Venue photo credit

Hinkle Fieldhouse - 01-2012.jpg, by Richie Diesterheft, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under CC BY-SA 2.0. The original file is unchanged; display cropping may apply. The image and cropped presentation remain under that license, separately from the article text. It shows the venue in 2012, not preparations for or play during the 2026 championship.

Last updated Oct 31, 2026. Suggest a correction ↗