ABA League Brings Back Final Four, Elects President

The hall in Zagreb only started emptying after nine hours of the session. Club officials walked out tired, phones in hand, but the message they carried home was clear: from next season, regional basketball gets its grand finale back. The Final Four is returning, and the man who will sit at the head of the league is Ostoja Mijailovic.

The Partizan president was elected as the new leader of the ABA League, and almost unanimously so. Out of twelve votes he took eleven, with only FMP voting against. That is the kind of backing that leaves no room for interpretation, the entire regional locker room lined up behind one name. Alongside him, Dragan Bokan of Buducnost VOLI and Davor Uzbinec of Cedevita Olimpija joined the Executive Board, while Marko Vojinovic stays on as competition director.

How will the title be decided now?

This is the part fans care about most. Instead of the old model, the league is introducing a format with twenty clubs split into two groups of ten. The top four teams from each group move on to a Top 8, and that is where the real race for the trophy begins. In the end, rather than a long play-off series, the champion is decided over two days, on May 28 and May 30, 2027.

A Final Four carries a special weight in basketball. It is a weekend where one bad quarter can undo an entire season, where there is no rematch and where a team’s character shows in a single showdown. The region had it, then lost it, and is now bringing it back precisely because it delivers what the league has been missing for a while, drama worth remembering and a final that packs the arena to the last seat.

One detail stood out immediately: Partizan and Crvena zvezda are again in different groups. That means the two biggest rivals meet in the group stage, as before, while the highest-stakes clash is saved for the later rounds, when every point hurts twice as much.

What comes next for Zvezda and Partizan?

For the two Belgrade clubs this is news with several layers. Mijailovic now carries a double role, president of Partizan and president of the league, which is bound to be a talking point at every derby until the end of his term. He has already shown he can push ambitious moves, and the Final Four is exactly that kind of move, bold and made for the headlines.

For fans the message is simple. Instead of a drawn-out finish, they get a weekend where everything breaks open, where one rebound, one pick-and-roll and one missed free throw can decide who lifts the trophy. The new 2026/27 season now has a clear target on the horizon, an arena on fire in late May and a title won in front of a packed house.

One question will follow the league in the coming months: does the new format and the new man in charge restore the ABA League to the status it once held, or is bringing back the Final Four only the first step in a longer story? What do you think, who does the new system favor the most?