NBA Cup 2026: How does it work, schedule, format, bracket, odds, location for NBA’s in-season tournament

Last December, the New York Knicks defeated an overwhelmed-looking young San Antonio Spurs team to win the NBA Cup.

Sound familiar? It foreshadowed what would happen in June, when the Knicks won their first title in 53 years. Now the NBA Cup is back starting Friday night, Oct. 30, so which teams are going to make a run and stake their claim to follow in the Knicks ‘ footsteps? Here is everything you need to know about the 2026 edition of the NBA Cup.

Advertisement

What’s the format for the 2026 NBA Cup?

The format hasn’t changed since the NBA Cup launched four years ago. The one big change this season is that the NBA Cup semifinals will take place on a team’s home court (the higher East and West seed remaining), and the NBA Cup Final will be played at the Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, home to the Butler Bulldogs — and the place where the real-life game the movie “Hoosiers” was based on was played.

All 30 teams have been drawn into one of six groups (five teams in each group, three East groups and three West groups). Each team plays the other teams in its group once — four games total — and those games count double as both regular season games and NBA Cup games.

The six group winners plus a wild card from each conference — determined by head-to-head record and point differential — go into an eight-team knockout round bracket (East vs. East, West vs. West, similar to the NBA playoffs where the conferences are separate until the Finals). The knockout round games are single-elimination.

Advertisement

The Final two teams, one East and one West, will head to Indianapolis for the Dec. 11 championship game.

Thanks to the bright, specially designed courts, fans will instantly recognize these as NBA Cup games when they tune in every Friday starting Oct. 30 and running through Nov. 27 (on Amazon Prime), with Cup games on NBC and Peacock on Nov. 24 (Celtics at Wizards, then Mavericks at Nuggets), as well as on ESPN Nov. 25.

NBA Cup games will be played on specially designed courts with the home team wearing their Statement Edition uniforms.

No one will confuse these with standard regular-season games.

Advertisement