The Basketball Africa League has announced that the league’s fifth season will tip off on 5 April, 2025 in Rabat, Morocco and culminate with the 2025 BAL Finals on 14 June at the SunBet Arena in Pretoria, South Africa.
This will mark the first BAL games in Morocco and the first time the BAL Finals will be held in South Africa.
The 2025 BAL season will feature the top 12 club teams from 12 African countries playing 48 games in Rabat; Dakar, Senegal; Kigali, Rwanda; and Pretoria.
The 12 teams will once again be divided into three conferences of four teams each. Each conference will play a 12-game group phase during which each team will face the other three teams in its conference twice. Eight teams from across the three conferences will qualify for the play-offs in Pretoria, which will tip off on 6 June and culminate with the 2025 BAL Finals on 14 June.
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“We have seen tremendous growth over the BAL’s first four seasons in the level of on-court competition, attendance, and engagement from fans and partners in Africa and globally,” said BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall. “Our milestone fifth season will build on that momentum and further showcase the level of talent and passion for basketball in Africa, including through the first BAL games in Morocco and the first BAL Finals in South Africa.”
This season, the national league champions from seven countries – Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tunisia – will automatically qualify for the BAL. The other five teams will qualify through the ‘Road to the BAL’ qualifying tournaments conducted by FIBA Africa across the continent from October – December 2024.
In addition to the games, the BAL will once again collaborate with its partners to conduct youth development and social impact programming in all four markets, including Jr. NBA, coaching and referee clinics, environmental days of service, the fourth BAL Innovation Summit, networking sessions to engage with members of the media, and a series of camps and workshops for young women as part of BAL4HER, the league’s platform for advancing gender equality in the African sports ecosystem.
The Rwanda Development Board, NIKE, Jordan Brand, and Wilson will return as BAL Foundational Partners. The league’s roster of marketing partners also includes Castle Lite, Hennessy and RwandAir.
On 1 June, Angola’s Petro de Luanda became the first sub-Saharan African team to win the BAL Finals after previous champions from Egypt and Tunisia.
