Sunturlic: Serbia in Talks to Join VTB League

On the sidelines of the ExpoBasket forum in Moscow, Filip Sunturlic said something no one at the top of the Serbian Basketball Federation had said out loud before: Serbian clubs could end up playing in Russia’s VTB League. The federation vice president made the statement to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, and it is the first time anyone at the top of the federation has confirmed the idea is even being discussed, let alone at a concrete level, with the man who runs the league.

“We are discussing the participation of Serbian clubs in the VTB League with Sergei Kushchenko, the president of the VTB League. We will look for opportunities for our clubs to take part in preparatory tournaments, including the Super Cup, and in the future potentially in the VTB League itself. We would like it to be the best clubs from Serbia, but when you look at the whole system of basketball competitions, players and clubs already have too many games during the season.”

Sunturlic also lays out an order of operations here: preparatory tournaments and the Super Cup first, and only later, possibly, the league competition itself. The gap between those two things is not cosmetic. Playing a semi-official match in August is one thing. Fitting the VTB League into a calendar that is already bursting at the seams is another.

That gap is also why “the best clubs from Serbia” does not, for now, mean Partizan and Crvena zvezda.

“Partizan and Crvena zvezda, for example, play around 80 games a season across all competitions. That is why I think their participation is impossible at this point. Once everything returns to normal, CSKA and Zenit will return to the Euroleague, UNICS and Parma to the EuroCup, and then we will see what happens.”

Eighty games is a number that explains the federation’s position on its own. The Euroleague or the ABA league, plus the domestic championship and cup, plus national team duty, already leave little breathing room, and the VTB League would only pack that schedule tighter. Sunturlic is therefore tying the next step not to a club’s willingness but to an external condition: the return of Russian teams to the European competitions they are currently barred from. Only once CSKA and Zenit are back in the Euroleague, and UNICS and Parma in the EuroCup, he says, does a more serious conversation about Serbian participation in the VTB League itself become possible.

Until then, the league Serbia would be joining is smaller than it was a year ago. The VTB League enters the 2026/27 season with 11 clubs instead of the planned 12, after Kazakhstan’s Astana withdrew in mid August, citing budget rationalization. This is a competition that once included Baltic clubs as well, so losing another participant, even one from outside Russia itself, is a further sign the league is looking for partners beyond its own borders.

The first concrete step in that direction is already visible this month, and it did not wait on any decision from the Serbian federation. The sixth VTB League Super Cup runs from September 17 to 20 in Moscow, and the field includes Turkey’s Anadolu Efes and Bosnia’s Igokea, clubs that are not formally part of the league. Last year’s Super Cup was played in Belgrade, so a link between Serbian basketball and this competition already exists, just in the opposite direction, as host rather than participant.

For now, Sunturlic is naming neither a date nor a club that would be first to a preparatory tournament. The next signal, he says, depends on how the status of Russian clubs in the Euroleague and EuroCup is resolved by next September. Until then, there is the conversation with Kushchenko, and the Super Cup in Moscow as the only concrete date the story currently hangs on.