NBA Christmas 2026 Schedule: 76ers at Lakers, and the Ticket Catch

The NBA released its Christmas Day schedule on 11 August 2026, and the 5pm ET game is Philadelphia at the Los Angeles Lakers — LeBron James’s first game back in Los Angeles since he left. Five games, all on ABC and ESPN.

The catch is in the second half of the question. Tickets for that game are not on sale, from anyone official, and no on-sale date has been published.

What is the NBA Christmas Day 2026 schedule?

Five games on Friday 25 December, from noon Eastern to half past ten at night.

Every one is on ABC and ESPN, streaming in the United States through the ESPN app. This is the 79th year the NBA has played on Christmas, a run going back to 1947, and the nineteenth in a row with a five-game slate.

Read the fixture order carefully, because the league does not write it consistently. Its key-dates page uses “at” — the format above, away team first. Its Christmas feature writes the same games as “Philadelphia 76ers vs. Los Angeles Lakers”, still away team first. Assume the home team leads and you will have all five games in the wrong cities. The Lakers host; the game is at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, tipping at 2pm local time.

The Knicks open the day as defending champions — they beat San Antonio in the 2026 Finals — which is why the league’s own announcement led with that game rather than with LeBron. It is their 59th Christmas appearance.

Is 76ers at Lakers the biggest game of the day?

It has the biggest individual storyline, but the NBA itself led with the Finals rematch in New York.

Worth separating those two things, because most coverage will not. The league headlined its release with San Antonio at New York, and ESPN’s own announcement calls that one the highly anticipated rematch. What Philadelphia at the Lakers has is the traditional 5pm ET window — the slot the NBA has long used for its most-watched game — and a storyline nothing else on the card can match.

LeBron James’s move to Philadelphia is finished business, not a rumour. He announced it himself on 24 July 2026, calling it his last decision; the contract entered the league’s transaction log on the 26th; and the 76ers published a signing release on the 27th. The reported terms are two years and $8 million with a player option — that figure is ESPN’s, from his agent, and the club has not confirmed any numbers. He earned close to $53 million with the Lakers last season.

He spent eight seasons in Los Angeles, from 2018-19 to 2025-26, and won a title there. The NBA’s own wording is that he “returns to L.A. for the first time since leaving the Lakers” — we are attributing that rather than stating it, because only two weeks of the schedule are public and there is no fixture list to check it against yet.

Two pieces of context that are safely first-party. This is his 24th season, a league record. And he already leads every player in Christmas Day appearances with 20, so this would be his 21st. He turns 42 five days after the game.

The NBA also raises a possibility rather than a fact, and it is worth quoting as such: having become the first father and son to play together as teammates, LeBron and Bronny James “can also be the first father and son to face each other in an NBA game.”

Can you buy tickets for 76ers at Lakers?

No — not from the Lakers, not from Ticketmaster, and no on-sale date has been announced.

This is not a case of us failing to find a link. Three separate official sources say it independently. The Lakers’ own ticket page states that information about 2026-27 tickets “will be announced at a later date”, and that “Ticketmaster will be the only authorized seller of Lakers Tickets”. Crypto.com Arena’s events page lists the 25 December game as On Sale TBA. And a search of Ticketmaster — the seller the Lakers just named as the only authorised one — returned no results for the fixture.

One oddity worth recording: the NBA’s own ticket site lists the game under a heading that says tickets are on sale, but its buy button sends you to a Ticketmaster page where the event does not exist.

What you can actually do, per the Lakers themselves: join the season ticket member wait list, or enquire about premium seating. That is the entire official list. The box office is not a workaround — the team’s own wording is that in-person purchases are possible “following the first date of a public on-sale”.

When it does open, the official routes are Ticketmaster and, for resale, Lakers Ticket Exchange inside the Ticketmaster seat map — blue dots are seats sold by the team, red dots with a circular arrow are seats listed by other fans.

What are resale sites asking?

Between $612 and $703 for the cheapest way in — for a game whose tickets have not been released to anyone.

Those are asking prices read on 12 August 2026, at a quantity of one, on each site’s event page. None of them is a face value, because no face value exists yet.

Three of those four cheapest listings are the same seat. Section 333, Row 15 — the identical upper-level seat, offered on three different sites at $612, $633 and $637.

The mechanics are visible if you look. SeatGeek’s listing page tells you the tickets “will be delivered to your email address by Dec 25” — the day of the game, because the seller does not hold them yet. The same sites carry listings for fixtures with no date at all, and full-season bundles from around $30,000 for a season whose schedule has not been published. One marketplace’s help page asserts that all 2026 regular-season Lakers tickets are on sale now, which its own primary seller flatly contradicts.

One headline price on that list is not a ticket. The cheapest item on Vivid Seats’ page for this game was $425 — a Lexus Club Pass marked “No Admission”. It does not get you into the game, and the site’s own FAQ nonetheless frames $425 as where fans wanting to see the Lakers can start. The cheapest actual admission ticket on that page was $612.

Some perspective on the urgency messaging, using only counted figures: Vivid Seats showed 40 listings for this game and SeatGeek showed 136, in a building the arena itself says holds 18,910 for Lakers games. The percentages those sites display alongside are their own marketing, not inventory data.

StubHub is a dash because it served this session prices in New Taiwan Dollars — the fourth time that has happened on this site — so nothing it showed is a figure a reader here would pay.

What time is it in the UK?

22:00 GMT on Christmas night for the LeBron game, and the last two land on Boxing Day.

These are derived from the league’s Eastern times, not published by any UK source. On 25 December both sides are on standard time — GMT here, Eastern Standard there — so the gap is exactly five hours. That is worth stating because it is not the same gap as October’s opening night, when both countries are still on summer time.

The 5pm ET slot works out unusually well from Britain: a 22:00 tip on Christmas night is the most watchable game of the five, while Oklahoma City and Denver play into the small hours of Boxing Day.

Sky Sports holds the UK rights, under a deal that started in 2025-26, and it covered this announcement on its own site. But when we checked, its basketball listings showed only WNBA fixtures and nothing for 25 December, and its Sky Sports sales page does not mention the NBA at all. Amazon also holds a package of UK games. No UK channel or start time has been published for any of the five, so treat Sky’s past Christmas coverage as precedent rather than as this year’s schedule.

We are not printing an NBA League Pass price: the NBA’s own page served this session in New Taiwan Dollars.

What else did the NBA announce?

Opening night, which is on a different broadcaster and includes the same two teams in reverse.

Tuesday 20 October is a tripleheader on NBC and Peacock, not ESPN — a distinction that catches people out. Philadelphia visits New York at 7pm ET, where the Knicks raise their first championship banner since 1973 and then face LeBron’s new team. Boston at Detroit opens the day at 3pm and Oklahoma City at San Antonio closes it at 9:30pm.

LeBron’s home debut in Philadelphia follows on 22 October against Cleveland, the franchise where he spent eleven of his first twenty-three seasons.

And one for British readers who would rather attend than watch: the NBA is playing a regular-season game at Co-op Live in Manchester on 17 January 2027, San Antonio against New Orleans, with a Paris game three days earlier. That is a fixture this audience can realistically get to.

What this does not tell you

What a ticket will cost, when it goes on sale, or which UK channel is showing it.

There is no face value for this game and no official price of any kind, so nothing here can tell you what you will pay. The resale figures are asking prices on speculative listings, read on one day, and this article deliberately takes no view on where they go — including no view on whether waiting for the official on-sale is better or worse than buying now.

It does not tell you the on-sale date, because nobody has published one. The Lakers say “at a later date” and the arena says “TBA”. Resale sites’ guesses about when tickets usually appear are their generalisations, not the team’s word.

It does not tell you the rest of the season. Only two weeks of the schedule are public, and the claim that Christmas is LeBron’s first game back in Los Angeles rests on the league’s own characterisation rather than on a fixture list anyone can check.

And it does not tell you where to watch in Britain beyond naming the rights holder, because no listing exists yet for these games.

Sources

Checked on 12 August 2026. Ticket prices on a game with no on-sale are asking prices on one day, not a market.

The Lakers, the arena and Ticketmaster were each checked separately rather than through one another, because the whole “can you buy it” question turns on them agreeing. Resale marketplaces were read in a browser at a quantity of one on their event pages, since their summary pages default to two tickets and show different figures. StubHub and the NBA’s League Pass page both served this session New Taiwan Dollars and are excluded on that basis rather than quietly dropped.