The last image of Dubai Basketball's first EuroLeague season was not the one anyone at Coca-Cola Arena had scripted. April 17, a neutral hall in Zenica, Bosnia, and a 95-85 defeat to Valencia Basket that closed the books at 19 wins, 19 losses, and 11th place. One spot outside the Play-In Showdown. One win short of a postseason that had felt within touching distance since February. The margin between a good debut and a great one turned out to be a single game across the seven months.

When the new 2026-27 Euro League season tips off on Thursday, September 24, the very first night of the entire competition runs through Dubai, where Real Madrid arrive at Coca-Cola Arena for Round 1. Certainly not a soft launch against a mid-table side. The three-time regular-season top-four finishers and runners-up in last May's Championship Game visit Dubai on opening night, in the kind of fixture that would have sounded absurd three years ago.

The schedule makers were not finished though. Round 2 brings FC Barcelona to Coca-Cola Arena on October 2, and that game carries a subplot thick enough to cut. Xavi Pascual, the man who coached Barcelona to the 2010 EuroLeague title and returned to the Palau last season, activated the termination clause in a contract that ran to 2028 and took charge in Dubai this summer. Aleksander Sekulic, the coach who steered Dubai through its debut EuroLeague campaign, went the other way and now sits on Barcelona's bench. Two coaches facing their former employers in the same building, eight days into the season. Fixture computers do not usually have a sense of humour. This one did.

The return leg at the Palau Blaugrana falls on February 3, by which point both teams will have shown their true shape you would think. Around those bookends sits the familiar 38-round slog: 20 teams, home and away, regular season closing on April 16, the Play-In on April 20 and 23, best-of-five playoff series from April 27, and a Final Four on May 28 and 30. Besiktas Istanbul replace AS Monaco in the field, and this will be the final season of the 20-team format before the competition expands to 24 clubs in 2027-28. Every result this year echoes into that restructured future.

Understanding why Dubai believes they can turn 11th into something better this year, starts with what went right last season. This was a team that walked into Istanbul in October and beat Fenerbahce 93-69, with Mfiondu Kabengele scoring 26. A team that ripped off a perfect 4-0 February that included wins over eventual champions Olympiacos and over Real Madrid, the side they now open against. A team that built one of the league's more awkward road trips for visitors, sitting at 8-3 at home deep into the winter while opponents managed jet lag, heat, and a crowd that grew louder as the season wore on. 

Sekulic, before his departure, framed the debut with honesty. This season has been an important step for our team, he said after the Valencia defeat in April. We proved that we can compete with the best teams in Europe but also showed where we need to grow. The club has spent the summer acting on the second half of that sentence with unusual aggression.

Pascual is the headline act. His trophy cabinet spans a EuroLeague title, four Spanish league championships, two Greek league titles with Panathinaikos, and a VTB crown with Zenit, and his teams are defined by structure: disciplined half-court execution, defensive detail, and an allergy to the loose possessions that cost Dubai perhaps half a dozen games last season. Handing him this roster is a statement of intent. Persuading him to leave Barcelona mid-contract to make it happen is a louder one.

The playing squad has been rebuilt around him. Elie Okobo arrives from Monaco as the reigning French league MVP and Finals MVP, a 28-year-old point guard with 182 EuroLeague appearances and a career-high 4.9 assists per game last season. With Monaco dropping out of the EuroLeague field, Dubai moved fast to capture the best player from a title-winning side, and Okobo gives them something they lacked in the biggest moments last year: a proven late-clock shot creator who has played deep into European springs. Jaron Blossomgame adds a veteran two-way wing. Davion Mintz, signed from Wurzburg after a strong Champions League season, deepens the backcourt rotation.

Then there is Mamadi Diakite, whose signing doubles as a compliment Dubai paid to their own scouting department. The Guinean big man put up 27 points and a performance index rating of 37 against Dubai last season while at Baskonia, and evidently left an impression. He arrives on a multi-year deal after averaging 8.4 points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in his first EuroLeague campaign, having led Spain's Liga Endesa in shot-blocking. His resume is no joke: an NCAA championship at Virginia, a ring with the 2021 Milwaukee Bucks, and now the frontcourt anchor role in possibly the Gulf's most ambitious sporting project. Alongside the re-signed Kabengele, whose February stretch of 18 points and six rebounds a game announced him as the team's interior heartbeat, Dubai suddenly have one of the more athletic big rotations in the league.

It’s not all shiny new additions however. There have been some significant departures too. Alpha Diallo, named the EuroLeague's Best Defender last season, exercised the NBA exit clause in his contract and signed with the Denver Nuggets, reportedly leaving significant money on the table to chase the dream. Aleksa Avramovic has been loaned to Bahcesehir, while Nate Mason, Bruno Caboclo, Taran Armstrong, Matt Ryan and Boogie Ellis have all moved on. That’s pretty heavy turnover for a team that finished .500, and it now places some weight on Pascual's preseason with the team. 

What Dubai carry into September that no signing can replicate is silverware. The club enters the new campaign as reigning ABA League champions, having topped the regular season reeling off 15 consecutive wins. Winning breeds habits, and habits travel. The dual-competition calendar remains demanding, but last season proved the squad depth exists to absorb it, and the ABA title run gave a young club its first taste of finishing a job rather than merely competing in one.

The fixture list offers a fair early examination. Real Madrid and Barcelona at home inside the first two rounds is brutal on paper, yet there is logic in welcoming the giants while their own rebuilt rosters are still finding rhythm, in an arena where Dubai beat Real Madrid only six months ago. 

There is a bigger picture to see here too. Dubai remains the first and only Middle Eastern club in the EuroLeague, and their second season lands at a moment when the region's relationship with elite basketball is deepening. 

The competition's commercial gaze keeps drifting eastward, and the 24-team expansion arriving in 2027-28 will only sharpen the question of how many more clubs from beyond Europe's traditional map may form part of it’s future.