The Roig Arena de Valencia will host the Copa del Rey Basketball in 2026 and 2027

Valencia buys The Basketball King Cup for two years in a row. The Roig Arena, the mastodontic basketball pavilion that is being built next to the old Fonteta, Casa del Valencia Basket, will be the headquarters of the cupo tournament in the editions of 2026 and 2027, the first time since the forties in which the competition sets a headquarters for two consecutive seasons. “A new era” is opened, as the ACB has expressed after the officially submitted agreement on Tuesday at the Palau de la Generalitat.

Juan Roig, president of Mercadona and great patron and owner of Valencia Basket, has fully financed from his pocket the construction of a budget 280 million, 47,000 square meters and a capacity of 20,000 people for musical shows and 15,000 for basketball meetings. With such a scenario available, the agreement between the ACB and the Generalitat has led to this double concession in exchange for a fee of 3.9 million euros per course, much higher than usual. On the table was the option of a longest multiannual linkage.

The agreement sets the cup at a point of the map until in 2028 allegedly changes from headquarters and breaks with one of the great attractions of a tournament that is synonymous with success due to the great mobilization of hobbies and the hook of a format that concentrates seven games in four days: the condition of itinerant competition traveling from city and city from one year to another. Now the economic commitment of Valencia and the Roig Arena magnet have altered the tradition. The new pavilion is expected to be operational next September and will begin to host the Valencia Basket meetings and be the concert scenario. The dream is also to celebrate a future meeting of the regular NBA season, in the style of Paris.

The works are currently finalized next to the Font Pavilion of Sant Lluís, a municipal installation for 8,000 spectators, and the training and training tracks of L’Alqueria del Basket. Already in the last Cup of Gran Canaria, conquered by the Unicaja Málaga, the Valencia shirts wore a new motto: of culture of the effort to Roig Arena. “It is a historical debt with Valencia since Fonteta hosted the Playoffs From the League as a bubble event in 2020 for the COVID, ”explained Antonio Martín, president of the ACB, in the presentation of the agreement.

Only on one occasion until now the Cup has repeated headquarters in two editions in a row, and it was in the prehistory of the competition: Barcelona in 1945 and 1946, when it was the Generalissimo Cup. Since the ACB assumed the organization of the championship in the 1983-84 season, instead of the Federation, the Cup has visited 16 different cities (Zaragoza, Badalona, ​​Barcelona, ​​Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Valladolid, La Coruña, Las Palmas, Granada, Sevilla, Murcia, León, Valencia, Vitoria, Malaga, Madrid and Bilbao), and that has been one of the fundamental ingredients and attractive, a format copied even by the NBA. In the last 20 years, the cupo map has some classic stops, such as Madrid, stage five times, Malaga (four) and Vitoria and Las Palmas (three), but always with the suitcases from one course to another.

Valencia, who last hosted the tournament in 2003, copy the model of the Spanish Super Cup, which in the two past editions has been played in Murcia after the agreement with the local government. Now take over the cup of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The Cabildo paid about 1.9 million euros to ACB as canon. Valencia bends the bet.