The NBA has informed teams that the 2025-26 salary cap will rise by 10%, the maximum increase allowed under the collective bargaining agreement, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
This is expected, as the league’s new broadcast rights deal will kick in next season. Here’s what 10% rise means:
- The salary cap will rise from $140.6 million to $154.6 million
- The luxury-tax threshold will rise from $170.8 million to $187.9 million
- The first apron will rise from $178.1 million to $195.9 million
- The second apron will rise from $188.9 million to $207.8 million
- The non-taxpayer midlevel exception will rise from $12.8 million to $14.1 million
- The taxpayer midlevel exception will rise from $5.2 million to $5.7 million
- The room exception will rise from $8 million to $8.8 million
These numbers, which are identical to the ones that teams reportedly got last summer, do not represent a “cap spike” like the one that allowed Kevin Durant to sign with the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2016, which followed the negotiation of the NBA’s previous broadcast rights deal.
When the league and the players’ union negotiated the current CBA in 2023, they came to an agreement on “cap smoothing” — regardless of how much basketball-related income increases in a single year, the salary cap can increase by only 10% per season. The salary cap will eventually reflect the influx of TV money, but that money will come into the system gradually, so as to not distort the free-agent market in any one offseason. For the next few years, the cap is expected to rise by the full 10%.
This summer, teams will continue to feel the effects of the new CBA, which discourages teams from going deep into the luxury tax by hitting them with roster-building restrictions. In comparison to last summer, though, they will have a bit more room to maneuver. In the 2024 offseason, the salary cap rose by only 3.4%.
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