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The NBA Cup starts October 30: what counts toward the standings and where the final is played

By McKinley Malbrough III, J.D., MS-HRM · Certified WNBA player agent · Former certified NBA agent

Published October 21, 2026. Last updated October 21, 2026.

This post is dated October 21, 2026, nine days before the first group game. Every rule below comes from the NBA’s own pages or the 2023 NBA collective bargaining agreement. The salary side of the league is in the NBA salary cap guide, and the first look at the season is in the 2026 preseason takes post.

What is the 2026 NBA Cup and when does it start?

The NBA Cup is the league’s in-season tournament, and group play starts Friday, October 30 and runs through Friday, November 27, per NBA.com. Quarterfinals are December 4 and 5, semifinals are December 8 and/or 9, and the championship is Friday, December 11, per NBA.com. The tournament is built into the regular season, so it is not an extra set of games on top of the 82.

How does the 2026 NBA Cup format work?

Thirty teams are split into six groups of five, three per conference, drawn at random from pots based on 2025-26 records, per NBA Cup 101. Each team plays the other four teams in its group once, which makes four group games per team and 60 in all, per the NBA group play schedule announcement.

The winner of each group advances, plus one wild card per conference, per NBA Cup 101. The wild card is the second-place team with the best group record in that conference. That gives eight teams in the knockout rounds. The NBA’s pages say one wild card per conference, which makes two wild cards and eight knockout teams in all.

Group ties are broken in order by head-to-head record, point differential, total points, the 2025-26 regular-season record and then a random drawing, per NBA Cup 101. Overtime counts as zero point differential, and overtime points are left out of total points, per NBA Cup 101.

What counts toward the 82 games and the standings?

Every Cup game counts toward the regular-season standings except the championship, per the NBA Cup FAQ. The NBA’s pages do not use the label games 81 and 82 for any Cup game, although the knockout rounds do count toward the 82. The championship does not count toward team records or regular-season statistics, per the NBA.

That covers group play, quarterfinals and semifinals. The NBA’s pages do not say which slot a knockout game fills. What they say is that every team still plays 82 regular-season games. Teams that miss the knockout rounds play regular-season games in that window instead, per NBA Cup 101. The 22 teams that do not qualify play two regular-season games each, per NBA Cup 101, and the four teams that lose in the quarterfinals play one each, per Article XX, Section 4(b)(vi) of the CBA.

Where are the knockout rounds and the final?

The quarterfinals and semifinals are played in NBA team markets, with the higher seed hosting, per NBA Cup 101. The championship is a single winner-take-all game at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on December 11, per the NBA Communications release of June 30. Prime Video has the championship, per the same release.

One detail is worth a note. The 2023 agreement text places the semifinals and final at a neutral site, per Article XX of the CBA. The 2026 semifinals follow the higher-seed model instead. The NBA Board of Governors approved that change in September 2025 to take effect in 2026-27, per an NBA Communications release, and the release does not give a reason.

What do players earn, and does it touch the cap?

Players on teams that reach the knockout rounds share a prize pool. The CBA sets base amounts per player of $500,000 for the winner, $200,000 for the runner-up, $100,000 for a semifinal loser and $50,000 for a quarterfinal loser, per Article IV, Section 6(d) of the CBA. Those are 2023-24 figures. Later years multiply them by a basketball-related-income growth factor, which the NBA and NBPA may agree to reduce but not below one, per the same section, and no NBA or NBPA document reviewed for this post states the 2026-27 dollar amounts.

Each player’s share is prorated by the number of knockout games on the team’s active or inactive list, and two-way and 10-day games count as one-half, per the CBA. The CBA lists the prize among the additional benefits the league provides, and the standard player contract pays salary exclusive of it, per Exhibit A. The CBA text reviewed does not state in so many words whether it counts against the cap, so this post does not say. Minimum-salary and two-way players are covered in the minimum salary guide and the two-way contract guide.

What should teams and players watch?

The first sorting happens in group play, because a four-game group leaves little room for one bad night, and the tiebreakers lean on point differential. Watch the Friday slate and the Cup nights of November 24, 25 and 27, per the NBA’s schedule. Fifteen of the 60 group games are on Prime Video, NBC and ESPN, per the NBA schedule announcement.