North American basketball’s elite NBA has announced a new three-year slate of regular-season international fixtures in Europe that includes a return to the UK and Germany, as well as the continuation of its presence in France.
The elite competition will host two games per year in Europe as part of its ongoing commitment to expanding in the region.
Go deeper with GlobalData
This will begin in the upcoming 2025-26 campaign, where the Memphis Grizzlies and Orlando Magic will face off in a pair of fixtures in Europe.
The first of these games will take place on January 15, 2026, at the 17,000-capacity Uber Arena in Berlin, Germany, before being followed by a fixture at London, UK’s 20,000-seater O2 Arena on January 18.
Paris’s Accor Arena (15,609 capacity), which has hosted NBA games in the last campaigns, will return to the fold in the 2027 and 2028 campaigns, hosting one match each in those seasons.
In 2027, it will be joined by the Co-op Live venue in Manchester, UK, which will host an NBA game for the first time, while in 2028, the Uber Arena will once again take up the other slot.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataFor Manchester, this will mark the city’s second-ever NBA game (it hosted a pre-season fixture in 2013) and its first-ever regular-season fixture. Similarly, the January 15, 2026, game will be the first-ever regular-season game in Germany, though the city has hosted pre-season games in the past.
Complemented by the slate of European games in the upcoming campaign will be the NBA’s annual Mexico City game, which this season will see the Detroit Pistons face the Dallas Mavericks on November 1.
The league has also scheduled several international pre-season games in a variety of markets, with Puerto Rico, Abu Dhabi, and Macau all hosting fixtures in October.
With the NBA having tagged Europe as a target future market, establishing an expanded presence in different markets on the continent is naturally part of the plan.
Earlier this year, NBA commissioner Adam Silver revealed that the league is exploring the prospect of creating a new NBA-branded European league in collaboration with the sport’s FIBA global governing body.
