Next year’s NBA All-Star game will feature “some form” of a USA team against the rest of the world.
The game will take place on 16 February during the 2026 Winter Olympics, which are being broadcast in the United States by NBC.
NBC has regained the rights to show the NBA All-Star game in the US, which will be switched to an afternoon start, with Winter Olympic events being broadcast before and after.
“So what better time to feature some form of USA against the world?” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver on Wednesday.
Speaking to Fox Sports, Silver said he “paid a lot of attention to what the NHL did” in February, hosting the 4 Nations Face-Off instead of an All-Star game.
The seven-game tournament featured only NHL players representing the USA, Canada, Finland and Sweden, and Silver noted it was “a huge success”.
He said the same about the men’s basketball competition at last summer’s Paris Olympics as although Team USA won a fifth straight gold, that was only after hard-fought games with Serbia and hosts France.
Interest in the NBA’s All-Star game has dropped in recent years and even a change to the format for this year’s game failed to stop the decline.
Despite having four teams playing a three-game mini-tournament, viewership dropped by 13% from 2024 to the second-lowest TV audience in 25 years.
There was a Global Stars team but introducing more of an international element from next year had been suggested, especially with so many international players now in the NBA.
For the past seven years, the league’s Most Valuable Player has not been American – although Joel Embiid has since chosen to represent USA rather than Cameroon or France – and for the past two years the first overall draft pick has been from France.
