Basketball 2028: the NBA 2027-28 Season and Olympic Basketball at LA28, Explained

Why 2028 is a basketball year like no other

Most years, a basketball fan only has to keep track of one calendar: the NBA season, from late October to June. In 2028 that calendar collides with something much rarer. Los Angeles hosts the Summer Olympics, and basketball is one of the hottest tickets of the Games. The Olympic tournament tips off on Wednesday, July 12, 2028, two days before the Opening Ceremony, and the men’s gold medal game is played on Sunday, July 30, the same day the Games close.

Before that, the NBA plays its 2027-28 season, which already has two European dates on the books: a regular-season game in Berlin and another in Paris in 2028. Add the All-Star Game, the Play-In, the playoffs and the Finals, and you have roughly ten months of basketball that people will want to see in person, often in cities they do not live in. That means travel, planning and, above all, timing tickets correctly.

This site exists for one reason: to help you know when tickets become available and where they are sold, without hype and without guessing. We are an independent guide. We are not affiliated with the International Olympic Committee, LA28, FIBA, USA Basketball or the NBA, and we do not sell Olympic tickets. What we offer is a free email alert and pages that separate confirmed facts from rumors.

LA28 Olympic basketball at a glance

Here is what is officially settled as of October 9, 2026:

• Dates: the Games run July 14-30, 2028; the basketball tournament runs July 12-30, 2028, according to FIBA’s qualification document.
• Venue for 5x5: every men’s and women’s game, from the group phase to both gold medal games, is scheduled at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood. Crypto.com Arena downtown is not a basketball venue in the current competition schedule.
• Venue for 3x3: a temporary arena called Valley Complex 3 in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, in the San Fernando Valley.
• Teams: 12 men’s and 12 women’s teams in 5x5, and 3x3 grows from 8 to 12 teams per gender compared with Paris 2024.
• Medal days: women’s gold on Saturday, July 29; men’s gold on Sunday, July 30; all four 3x3 medal games on Saturday, July 22.

The full day-by-day breakdown, with tip-off windows in Pacific Time, is on our LA28 basketball schedule page, and the two arenas are covered in detail in our venues guide.

Where LA28 tickets stand right now

If you missed the 2026 sales, you are not out of luck, but you do need to understand what already happened. LA28 sold Olympic tickets in 2026 through a registration-and-draw system. Fans registered, were randomly drawn, and then received a time slot to shop. The first window, Drop 1, ran in April 2026 after a locals presale for residents of the Los Angeles and Oklahoma City regions. A Visa presale followed at the end of July, and Drop 2 ran from August 10 to August 20, 2026.

According to LA28, more than six million Olympic tickets were sold across Drops 1 and 2, and the organizers said the vast majority of available inventory was gone. Drop 2 was the last general-public sale of 2026. The next step, per LA28, is a first-come, first-served sale in 2027, with no draw, no time slot, refreshed inventory across all sports and no purchase limits. LA28 had not announced the opening date as of October 9, 2026.

On pricing, LA28 states that tickets for every sport start at $28 and that more than one million tickets were offered at that price. It also says nearly half of Olympic tickets were priced under $200, more than three quarters (finals included) under $400, and about 5% were premium seats above $1,000. LA28 does not publish a per-session basketball price list in its press releases, so we do not print one. Our step-by-step LA28 ticket guide walks through each phase and what to prepare for 2027.

Reminder: official LA28 tickets are sold through LA28’s own ticketing channels. Hospitality packages are handled by On Location, LA28’s official hospitality provider. Verified resale, according to LA28, opens in 2027; listings elsewhere before then are not verified. See our resale and scams guide.

Who will be on the court in Los Angeles?

As host nation, the United States has a place in both 5x5 tournaments, formally subject to a FIBA Central Board decision in 2027. On the women’s side, the picture is already clearer: Team USA won the 2026 FIBA Women’s World Cup in Berlin, beating France 97-79 in the final, so under FIBA’s rule only the USA qualifies directly and the other 11 places go through Olympic Qualifying Tournaments in February 2028.

The men’s field will be shaped mostly by the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2027 in Qatar (August 27 to September 12, 2027), which hands out seven Olympic places, and by four Olympic Qualifying Tournaments from June 26 to July 2, 2028. Nobody has been selected yet. USA Basketball has named its head coaches for the 2025-28 cycle, Erik Spoelstra for the men and Kara Lawson for the women, but there is no official LA28 roster. The defending champions from Paris 2024 are the USA in both men’s and women’s 5x5, each time after a final against France. Details are on our teams and qualification page, and the fast-growing short format has its own 3x3 guide.

The NBA 2027-28 season: what is known

The NBA has not published its 2027-28 schedule. By convention, it arrives in mid-August: the 2025-26 schedule came out on August 14, 2025, and the 2026-27 schedule on August 13, 2026. Expect the 2027-28 version around mid-August 2027, but treat that as a pattern, not a promise.

What is already on the books:

• Berlin and Paris in 2028. On July 30, 2025, the NBA announced six regular-season games in Europe over three years. The 2028 leg goes to Uber Arena in Berlin and Accor Arena in Paris. The league said teams and dates would be announced before the 2027-28 season. Nothing had been announced as of October 9, 2026. See our Berlin 2028 and Paris 2028 pages.
• Thirty teams. The Board of Governors authorized the league in March 2026 to explore expansion bids for Las Vegas and Seattle only. That is not approval. An entry season of 2028-29 has been reported in the press, not confirmed. Unless something changes, 2027-28 remains a 30-team, 82-game season.
• The All-Star Game. Phoenix hosts in February 2027. The 2028 host city had not been announced as of October 9, 2026. Read more on our All-Star 2028 page.
• Playoffs and Finals. The format is stable: a Play-In for seeds 7 to 10, then four best-of-seven rounds, with the Finals in a 2-2-1-1-1 home pattern. The 2028 dates are not published; the usual window runs from mid-April to June. Our playoffs and Finals pages explain how tickets are usually released.

Other international dates such as a game in Mexico City or preseason games in Macao have precedents but no 2027-28 announcement yet. Our NBA 2027-28 schedule hub keeps the full list.

NBA Finals, then the Olympics: how the summer of 2028 fits together

For anyone planning a trip, the overlap matters. The NBA Finals usually finish in June. The men’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments run June 26 to July 2, 2028, and the Olympic tournament starts on July 12. That is a tight turnaround for NBA players who might be picked by their national teams, which is one reason rosters are never known far in advance. From a fan’s point of view, the practical takeaway is simple: you cannot buy LA28 tickets “for your favorite player.” You buy a session, at a venue, on a date. Who plays in it is decided later.

That is also why the group phase can be good value. A midday double-header at the Intuit Dome during the first week includes two games for one ticket, and the pairings are set only after the draw and qualification are complete. Medal games are a different story: their date and time are fixed, but the teams are not known until a few days before.

How this guide works, and how to get alerted

Every fact on this site comes from a source we can name: LA28, FIBA, the IOC’s Olympic documents, the NBA or USA Basketball. When something comes only from press reports, we say “reportedly” or “according to the press.” When something is simply not announced, we write “to be confirmed” instead of filling the gap with a guess. Each page has a facts box with the status of every key item and the date we last checked it.

The fastest way to keep up is the email alert. For LA28, we send a message when the 2027 first-come, first-served sale opens and when LA28 announces a new ticketing phase, including the opening of its verified resale. For the NBA, we send a message when the 2027-28 schedule is released and when the Berlin and Paris 2028 matchups are named. After you sign up for an NBA alert, we may show you partner ticket sites; those are resale marketplaces, and prices there can be higher than face value. For LA28 we link only to the official channel. We never promise Olympic tickets, and you can unsubscribe at any time.