The polls have opened.
Voting for the 2026 NBA All-Star Game opens on Dec. 17, and for the next month, fans can now cast one vote a day for the starters in that game — to be broadcast on NBC and Peacock.
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Fans will vote for the five starters – with no regard to position — and those votes (combined with player and media votes) will pick the starters for the game Feb. 15 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif., the home of the LA Clippers. This year’s game will feature a new three-team format (eight players each), with two USA teams and one World team competing for the title (more on the format below).
Voting, however, remains the same as it has in recent years. Fans with an NBA ID can submit one ballot per day via the NBA App and NBA.com, and certain days — Dec. 21, Dec. 25, Dec. 30, Jan. 7 and Jan. 14 — are designated “3-for-1 days” where votes count triple.
Who should make the All-Star Teams?
Everyone — the fans, the players, the select media — has the same vote, picking the five starters from each conference (a vote of the coaches picks the seven reserves for each conference). But that’s no fun, so here are my picks for the starters and reserves — plus some snubs —from each conference.
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Eastern Conference
Starters
Jalen Brunson
Cade Cunningham
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Donovan Mitchell
Jaylen Brown
Reserves
Tyrese Maxey
Karl-Anthony Towns
Jalen Duran
Jalen Johnson
Scottie Barnes
Norman Powell
Josh Giddey
Snubs: Evan Mobley, Desmond Bane, Brandon Ingram, Bam Adebayo
Analysis: I went with four guards in the starting five (if you count Brown as a guard), and I feel like Maxey could get a starting spot and it wouldn’t be a bad call. Duran, Johnson, Towns and Barnes have to be locks. On the bubble, Powell has earned this in Miami, and the same with the way Giddey has played in Chicago.
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Western Conference
Starters
Luka Doncic
Shai Gilgious Alexander
Nikola Jokic
Alperen Sengun
Kevin Durant
Reserves
Victor Wembanyama
Anthony Edwards
Stephen Curry
James Harden
Chet Holmgren
Austin Reaves
Jamal Murray
Adam Silver special designation: LeBron James
Snubs: Deni Adjiva, Devin Booker, Lauri Markkanen, Julius Randle.
Analysis: While this is how I would like to see the vote go, the reality is that there is a 0% chance LeBron won’t be voted in as a starter (same with Curry). The problem is there are so many deserving players in the West I was looking for a way to get another player in the mix.
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Leaving out Adjiva is painful, he has earned it, but I would say the same things about all the snubs in the West. I can make the case for any of them to be in, but I’d be taking out someone equally deserving. On the margins, what Reaves and Murray have done for winning teams gets them the nod.
World Team
The way my picks shake out, there are eight international players for the World Team:
Luka Doncic
Shai Gilgious Alexander
Nikola Jokic
Alperen Sengun
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Karl-Anthony Towns
Victor Wembanyama
Jamal Murray
Bet against that group at your own risk.
All-Star Game format
The timing could not be better for the NBA All-Star Game to return to NBC and debut on Peacock — the 2026 game lands right in the middle of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. That set up perfectly for the first-of-its-kind All-Star Game pitting the best of the USA vs. the NBA’s deep international talent pool.
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For fans, the voting is essentially the same, they will help select the five starters from each conference, with the one change being votes will be positionless — if you want to vote for five centers to start, you can. From there, the coaches select the seven reserves from each conference, a total of 24 players.
Those 24 All-Star players will be divided into three teams — two USA teams and one world team — that will compete in a round-robin tournament of four 12-minute games. Each of the three teams will have a minimum of eight players (if the USA or World teams are short on players, the league office will select a player or players to reach the required number).
At the end of the round-robin, the two top teams will play a championship game (the fourth 12-minute game of the day) for the title.
