2024-25 Basketball Champions League Competition System
The 2024-25 season of the Basketball Champions League will involve 52 teams, including many national champions out of the 29 European countries that will be represented in this season.
A minimum of 172 games will be played over the course of eight months of competition in this 9th season of the Basketball Champions League.
Games will be played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in order to safeguard national leagues’ schedules, and national team windows are integrated (and protected) in the calendar.
Thirty-two (32) teams will play in the Regular Season of the Basketball Champions League. Twenty-eight (28) of those teams are directly qualified for the Regular Season (based on sporting criteria), and four (4) teams will be joining through the Qualification Rounds.
Qualification Rounds
The competition will start on September 16, 2024.
Four (4) teams will qualify for the Regular Season from the Qualification Rounds.
The twenty-four (24) teams will compete in four (4) Qualification Round tournaments, and were split into six pots (seeded and unseeded) for the purpose of the draw, based on the BCL Club and Country Rankings.
Regular Season
The Regular Season will tip off on October 1, 2024 and conclude in December 2024.
The Regular Season phase will be composed by 32 clubs that are split in 8 groups of 4 clubs each, and will play in a round robin, home & away, system from October to December. The first-placed teams in each group will qualify directly for the Round of 16 phase. The second and third-placed teams will face each other in a Play-In to qualify to the Round of 16.
Play-Ins
The Play-In phase will be composed of 16 clubs; the second and third-placed teams of the 8 Regular Season groups (see detailed explanations about the pairings here). Teams will play a best-of-3 series over the month of January, with the home advantage to the second-placed teams. The 8 Play-In winners will join the 8 Regular Season group winners, already qualified, in the Round of 16.
Round of 16
The Round of 16 phase will be composed by 16 clubs, the 8 first-placed teams coming from the Regular Season, and the 8 winners of the Play-In phase. They will be split in 4 groups of 4 clubs each and play in a round robin, home & away, system from end of January to March. The first two teams in each group will qualify for the Quarter-Finals.
Quarter-Finals
The Quarter-Finals phase will be composed by 8 clubs, the first two teams of each Round of 16 group. Teams will play a best-of-3 series over the month of April, with the home advantage to the first-placed teams. The 4 winners will qualify for the Final Four.
Final Four
A Final Four tournament will conclude the season. The 4 qualified teams will compete for the trophy over a weekend, with the Semi-Finals on Friday and the Finals on Sunday.
More details on the Final Four are available in Article 19 of the Regulations.