The sixth season of the Basketball Africa League will begin on March 27, 2026, in Pretoria and conclude on May 31 in Kigali.
The 2026 Basketball Africa League (BAL) season will kick off on March 27 at the SunBet Arena in Pretoria, South Africa. The competition will feature 12 clubs from 12 African countries for a total of 42 games played in Pretoria, Rabat, and Kigali.
The teams will be divided into two conferences of six clubs each. The Kalahari Conference will be played from March 27 to April 5 in Pretoria. The Sahara Conference will then take place from April 24 to May 3 at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Sports Complex in Rabat, where Morocco will host one of the highlights of the group stage.
The Moroccan club FUS Rabat Basketball will be among the participating teams and will try to take advantage of home-court advantage in the games held in the Moroccan capital. The playoffs are scheduled to take place in Kigali.
Following the group stage, the top eight teams will qualify for the playoffs, scheduled for May 22-31 at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda. The 2026 BAL Final will be played on May 31 in this arena, which has become a central hub for African basketball.
On June 14, 2025, Alahli Tripoli, a Libyan club, became the first Libyan team to win the BAL Final, following in the footsteps of Angola, Egypt, and Tunisia. The 2025 BAL season reached fans in 214 countries and territories, was broadcast in 17 languages, and set an attendance record with more than 140,000 spectators. It also generated
over 1.2 billion impressions across the NBA and BAL’s social media channels, according to the organisers.
Alongside the matches, several development programmes will be organised in the host countries and in other African markets, including training camps for young players, training for coaches and referees, as well as initiatives around the BAL4HER programme dedicated to the promotion of women’s basketball.
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