It's hard to believe that the 2025-26 NBA season is nearing its conclusion ... but, as the roll-out of end-of-season awards always suggests, this year's campaign is heading towards its grand finale.
On Sunday night, the league revealed the finalists for its major accolades, like Most Valuable Player, Rookie of the Year and more. But what they didn't reveal, however, was when exactly they would announce the winners of those prizes.
Luckily, we got something of a schedule come Monday afternoon ... but we'll still need to use our detective skills to deduce when a few of the bigger honors will be revealed.
Let's take a quick look at what we know so far:
2025-26 NBA awards announcement schedule: What we know
On Monday morning, the NBA released an announcement schedule for the following awards: Defensive Player of the Year, Clutch Player of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, the Sportsmanship Award and the Most Improved Player. The recipients for those five awards will be announced between April 20 and 24, with one winner announced per day. In keeping with that schedule, Spurs big man Victor Wembanyama was announced as the 2025-26 Defensive Player of the Year on Monday evening.
| Award | Date | Time | Channel | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defensive Player of the Year | April 20 | 6 p.m. ET | Peacock, NBC Sports | Victor Wembanyama |
| Clutch Player of the Year | April 21 | 6 p.m. ET | Peacock, NBC Sports | TBD |
| Sixth Man of the Year | April 22 | 6 p.m. ET | ESPN | TBD |
| Sportsmanship Award | April 23 | 12 p.m. ET | @NBAPR | TBD |
| Most Improved Player | April 24 | 6:30 p.m. ET | Prime | TBD |
What about the rest of the awards?
As of this writing, we do not yet have announcement dates for Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, Executive of the Year, the Hustle Award winner, Teammate of the Year, Social Justice Champion, and, of course, MVP.
That said, we can use timelines of seasons past to better guess-timate when the most high-profile of the above accolades—Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year and MVP—will come in.
Last season, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was announced as MVP on May 21, just ahead of Game 2 of the Western Conference finals. It stands to reason that this year's award will follow a similar timeline. As for Rookie of the Year, that accolade, won by Spurs' Stephon Castle, was announced on April 29, 2025 ... so perhaps the reveal this season can be expected sometime within the next two weeks. And finally, re: Coach of the Year, the 2024-25 winner—Cavs leader Kenny Atkinson—was announced on May 5, 2025. So again, it stands to reason that this year's declaration will come around the same time.
That said, if we hear otherwise, we promise you'll be the first to know.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as NBA Awards Schedule 2026: Every Date We Know, Plus Our Best Guess at Those We Don't.
