NBA play‑in and playoff dates

The NBA has stopped leaving its spring calendar fuzzy. The league’s 2026 postseason now has fixed dates all the way from the end of the regular season to a possible Game 7 of the Finals. The regular season ends on April 12. The SoFi Play-In Tournament runs from April 14 through April 17. The first round of the playoffs starts on April 18. And the Finals open on June 3, with later games scheduled for June 5, June 8, June 10, June 13, June 16, and June 19 if the series goes the distance (nba.com). That matters because the play-in has become the league’s pressure chamber. It is not just a prelude. Teams that finish seventh through 10th in each conference still have a path into the main bracket, and the format compresses that fight into four days. The seventh- and eighth-place teams play for the No. 7 seed. The ninth- and 10th-place teams play an elimination game. Then the loser of the 7–8 game faces the winner of the 9–10 game for the No. 8 seed. By April 17, the bracket is complete. One day later, the real playoffs begin (nba.com). This year, that final week is crowded because the standings are still moving. NBA.com’s live playoff picture on April 7 showed several first-round matchups still unsettled and both conferences still sorting out the play-in line. The page also made clear how little time remains for teams trying to avoid those extra games: only the final days of the regular season stand between a guaranteed best-of-seven series and a sudden-death detour through the play-in (nba.com). The calendar also says something about television. June 3 is an earlier Finals start than many fans instinctively expect, because the league has tightened the handoff from the conference rounds into June. ABC will carry the Finals, while the broader 2025-26 season is the first under the NBA’s new 11-year media agreements with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon. Those deals reshaped where regular-season and postseason games appear, but the Finals remain with ABC, which gives the league one stable landmark in a changing broadcast map (pr.nba.com). The official postseason hub now puts those dates front and center because fans do plan around them. Travel, ticket sales, watch parties, and even arena availability all depend on a bracket that firms up late and moves fast once it does. The league’s own playoff site lists April 12 as the last day of the regular season, April 14 to 17 for the play-in, April 18 for the playoff opener, and June 3 for Finals Game 1, turning what used to feel like a blur of “mid-April to mid-June” into a schedule you can actually use (nba.com). And the endpoint is more exact than the early coverage suggested. Some reports framed the Finals as possibly ending between June 10 and June 17, but the NBA’s official schedule goes one step further: if the series reaches a seventh game, the season will end on Friday, June 19, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC (nba.com).