The 2026 NBA playoffs is the upcoming postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association's 2025âÂÂ26 season. The playoffs will begin on April 18 and will end with the conclusion of the 2026 NBA Finals.
Eight teams from each conference participated in the playoffs. The top six teams in each conference, based on winning percentage, directly qualified for the playoffs; the seeding order of those teams was also based on winning percentage. If two or more teams had the same record, standard NBA tiebreaker rules were used.
The NBA Board of Governors adopted a format starting in 2021 to have a play-in tournament involving the teams ranked 7th through 10th in each conference. The 7th place team and 8th place team participated in a "double-chance" game, with the winner advancing to the playoffs as the 7-seed. The loser then played the winner of the elimination game between the 9th place and 10th place teams to determine the playoff's 8-seed. The NBA's regular playoff format then proceeded as normal. Furthermore, the winner of the match between the loser of the 7/8 game and the winner of the 9/10 game always plays on day 2 of the NBA playoffs to allow that team at least a day of rest.
Each conference's bracket was fixed with no reseeding. All rounds were a best-of-seven series; a series ended when one team won four games, and that team advanced to the next round. All rounds, including the NBA Finals, were in a 2âÂÂ2âÂÂ1âÂÂ1âÂÂ1 format with regards to hosting. In the conference playoffs, home-court advantage went to the higher-seeded team (number one being the highest). For the NBA Finals, home-court advantage went to the team with the better regular season record, and, if needed, ties were broken based on head-to-head record, followed by intra-conference record.
On March 17, 2026, the Oklahoma City Thunder became the first team to clinch a playoff spot. While noted in the below tables, division titles have no bearing on seeding.
The below tables reflect current playoff positioning and are subject to change through the end of the regular season (April 12). Seeds 7 and 8 in each conference are not finalized until the first-stage play-in tournament is completed (April 14âÂÂ17).
Teams ranked 7 through 10 will participate in the play-in tournament to determine seeds 7 and 8.
Teams ranked 7 through 10 will participate in the play-in tournament to determine seeds 7 and 8.
This is the first postseason of new 11-year deals with the ESPN family of networks, NBC Sports and Amazon Prime Video. All first-round playoff games will now be exclusive national games, and there will no longer be regional broadcasts.
Amazon Prime Video will stream between nine and 17 first-round playoff games, and between five and nine second-round playoff games. ESPN and ABC will have approximately 18 games in the first two rounds. NBC Sports will produce between 22 and 34 games in the first two rounds, with at least half of them airing on NBC.
As per the alternating rotation, NBC will have the Western Conference Finals this season, while ESPN/ABC will have the Eastern Conference Finals. ABC has exclusive coverage of the NBA Finals for the 24th straight year.
Peacock and ESPN DTC will also stream all NBC and ESPN/ABC games, respectively.
For the fifth straight year, the playoffs is officially known as the "2026 NBA Playoffs presented by Google." During the expanded sponsorship agreement with Google where it expanded the sponsorship from the "Google Pixel" brand in favor of the general Google branding, this sponsorship provides the logo branding inside the venues and in official digital properties on-court, as well as commercial inventory during ABC, ESPN, NBC, Amazon Prime Video telecasts of the playoff games.