The Unified VTB League approved the format of the new season
On Tuesday in Moscow, the Council of the Unified VTB League was held, which approved the parameters of the next season of the basketball championship. Changing the change following the results of the meeting – the transformation of the league, which began in 2009 as an international project, into a competition with the participation of only Russian teams. However, for many years, foreigners have not played a noticeable role in it anyway. But the League Council remaining, like other Russian championships in international isolation, decided to load the teams and actually hold two tournaments at the same time. The Cup meetings will be added to the championship of the Unified VTB League. Moreover, two of its participants will be foreign. We are talking about a full, for several months, competition with the participation of eight teams.
The Council of the Unified League of VTB, whose meeting was held on Tuesday in Moscow, approved a number of important decisions. So, the Council agreed that there will be 11 teams in the league against 12 last season. There, in fact, there was no choice. Kazakhstan “Astana” in the spring announced that she was suspended in the tournament, referring to difficulties with the completion of legionnaires. In fact, we are talking about a lack of money. She appeared brightly in the last championship. In it, “Astana” in 44 matches managed to win only twice. And it seems that the loss of an outsider is not such a big thing. But in reality, this is a sign of the moment.
For the first time in the entire existence of the League (her first championship took place in the 2009/10 season), she was left without foreign clubs at all. And the project began as international.
In the first season for the League, only three of the eight participants represented Russia. In the 2013/14 championship, when the league grown to the peak teams, the share of foreign clubs (from Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia) accounted for half. But because of the mainly political events, which the leadership of the league could not influence, the foreign presence was steadily reduced and eventually disappeared at all. Although far from always the matter was in politics. Say, the Belarusian “TsMOKI” starred from the championship at the end of the season before last, like “Astana” now, due to financing insufficiency.
Note that actually the league risked losing two participants at once. The fact is that Samara faced serious financial difficulties (in the last championship, the Volzhans took the penultimate place). The club has accumulated debts of 200 million rubles. But thanks to the intervention of the leadership of the League and the support of the regional authorities, about which Match-TV was told by the CEO of the club Igor Bochkarev, Samara in the season-2025/26 will still speak, however, with a test term for the year. The full list of the tournament participants is as follows: “Avtodor” (Saratov), “Yenisei” (Krasnoyarsk), “Zenit” (St. Petersburg), Lokomotiv-Kuban (Krasnodar), MBA (Moscow), Paris Nizhny Novgorod, Parma (Perm), “Samara”, UNICS (Kazan), Uralmash (Yekaterinburg), CSKA) (Moscow).
As for the format of the tournament of the new season, it has undergone some adjustments.
As in the last championship, the teams will play four circles (two games at home and two on the road). The eight of the strongest will immediately go to Play-off. That is, the Play-in stage existing last season is canceled (in it, only six teams received direct tickets to the decisive stage, and four more fought for two remaining in the joints). It turns out 40 matches for a team in the regular championship.
But in reality, representatives of top clubs will have to play more often. The fact is that the League established another tournament, in addition to the championship itself. While it is just called the Cup. On the official website of the Unified League, it is noted that it will be held together with a certain partner (we can assume that he will receive the name of the partner). At the same time, we are talking about a full -fledged competition for eight participants. Two of them are foreign. The Cup matches will be held from October 2025 to March 2026 (participants will be divided into two groups of four teams, play in groups of a two -cruise tournament, the two best teams will fall into the Final Four), and the maximum number of matches for the teams will be 28.
We touched on the change and the opening season of the league Super Cup. For the first time in history, he will go abroad, in Belgrade.
The tournament will be attended by four VTB League teams (most likely it will be CSKA, Zenit, UNICS and Lokomotiv-Kuban), as well as four European clubs. The full composition of the participants and the exact dates will be announced later.
The NTB Unified League regular championship will be held from October 1, 2025 to April 22, 2026. Play-OFF will begin on April 25, 2026 and will end no later than June 20. The match of all League stars is scheduled for February 15, 2026.
