NBA officially announces the All-Star voting process: voting starts December 18, starters will be revealed on January 20

On December 16 Beijing time, the NBA announced the voting timeline for the 2026 All-Star game. Voting opens at 1:00 AM Beijing time on December 18 and will continue until 12:59 PM Beijing time on January 15, allowing fans to vote for their preferred stars to help them make the All-Star roster.

For fans aiming to fully back their home team’s key players, voting strategy is crucial. The NBA will continue its “one vote counts as three” campaign, where each vote during the event counts triple. Important dates to note (all in Beijing time) are December 22, December 26, December 31, January 8, and January 15. The All-Star starters will be announced on January 20.

The 2026 NBA All-Star game will debut a new format featuring “Team USA versus Team World,” with three teams participating. Two teams will consist of players from the United States, while the third team will be made up of international players forming the World team.

Each team will have at least 8 players, and the event will use a round-robin format consisting of four 12-minute games. The schedule for the round-robin is as follows: the first game features Team A versus Team B; the winner of that match faces Team C in the second game; the loser of the first game plays Team C in the third game. After these three games, the top two teams based on their records will advance to the fourth and final championship game. If all three teams finish with a 1-1 record, advancement will be determined by point differential across the round-robin games.

The 2026 NBA All-Star selection will still include 24 players, with 12 from each conference. The five starters from each conference will be chosen through voting by fans (50%), current NBA players (25%), and a media panel (25%). The seven reserves per conference will be selected by NBA head coaches. This year’s All-Star selection will remove positional restrictions on the court.

If the voting results do not produce at least 16 U.S.-born players and 8 international players, the NBA will add players to meet these minimum quotas. The supplemental selections will be finalized by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and at least one team will have more than 8 players as a result. The specific method for dividing these 16 players between the two U.S. teams will be announced at a later date.

The 2026 NBA All-Star Game is scheduled to take place on February 16, 2026.