The New York Knicks won their first NBA Championship since 1973 last season
The 2026-27 National Basketball Association (NBA) season starts Tuesday, 20 October with the Boston Celtics heading to the Detroit Pistons.
The regular season, as well as the in-season NBA Cup, takes place between October and April.
After that, the play-offs take place to determine the NBA champions, who are crowned in June.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of Oklahoma City Thunder has won each of the last two NBA regular season Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards
All 30 teams are evenly split into two conferences of 15 - creating the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference.
Each team plays 82 regular season matches between October and April, with the top six teams from each conference qualifying directly into the NBA play-offs.
The teams between seventh and 10th enter the play-in tournament, where two more play-offs spots from each conference are up for grabs.
There are also three divisions in each conference, with teams playing every other team in their division four times in the regular season.
Teams will then play six of the other sides in their conference four times, while taking on the remaining four franchises three times. They will then face all 15 teams in their opposing conference twice.
While the regular season sees teams play against opposition in both the Eastern and Western Conferences, the play-offs are conference-specific. All rounds of the play-offs are played in a best of seven-match series.
The winner of the Eastern Conference will face the winner of the Western Conference in the NBA finals in June, with the winner being crowned NBA champions.
The New York Knicks also won the NBA Cup last season
The NBA Cup is an in-season competition where teams compete for a trophy, but some results also count towards the overall season standings.
The event starts on Friday, October 30, with the final taking place on Friday, December 11.
Teams face four teams from their conference and the group winners, as well as the best runner-up from each conference, advance into the quarter-finals.
Like the play-offs, teams only play against opposition in the same conference in the quarter-final and semi-final. Matches are also one-off knockouts, rather than a series.
The winners of each conference will meet in the championship game to determine the NBA Cup winner.
The Knicks are the defending NBA Cup champions, while the first edition in 2023 was won by the Lakers.
London-born OG Anunoby is a two-time NBA Championship winner