List of Philippine Basketball Association conferences

This is a list of Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) conferences. Conferences are tournaments within a season, as opposed to the North American usage where a conference is a grouping of teams. If a team wins all of the conferences in a season, it is said that they have won a Grand Slam.

Types of conferences

As of the 2023–24 season, there is a total of 134 conferences/tournaments held by the PBA since 1975. It was further broken down into three categories:

All Filipino conferences - only players with Filipino citizenship are allowed to compete. (45 tournaments as of 2023–24 season)
Import-laden conferences - players with other citizenship/nationality are allowed to compete, with teams usually limited with one non-Filipino on their active lineup. (89 tournaments as of 2023–24 season)
Special tournaments - teams may or may not include imports but championships won don't count to the championship tally.

Number of conferences

There had always been three conferences in a PBA season. The exceptions are:

1981 PBA season had two conferences due to Manila's hosting of the 1981 Southeast Asian Games.
1998 PBA season had four conferences due to the celebration of the centennial of the Philippine Declaration of Independence.
There were two conferences from 2004 to 2010 due to modification of the season format from three conferences to two, and from changing the season calendar from January or February–December to October–July. To do this, there was a transitional 2004 PBA Fiesta Conference. The association reverted to three conferences for the 2010–11 PBA season.
2020 PBA season had one conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines.
2021 PBA season had two conferences due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines.
2023–24 PBA season had two conferences due to the Philippines' hosting of the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup and the 19th Asian Games in China in 2023.

List of conferences

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d The first and second conferences of the 1975 and 1976 seasons were officially named as All-Filipino Conference and Open Conference respectively. The All-Filipino Conference was reclassified in the 2010s as an import-laced tournament since the league gave teams the option to hire foreign players or "imports". Both tournaments were renamed as First and Second Conference since the 2001 edition of Hardcourt, the official PBA Annual.

References

Past PBA seasons

[1975pba-1] The first and second conferences of the 1975 and 1976 seasons were officially named as All-Filipino Conference and Open Conference respectively. The All-Filipino Conference was reclassified in the 2010s as an import-laced tournament since the league gave teams the option to hire foreign players or "imports". Both tournaments were renamed as First and Second Conference since the 2001 edition of Hardcourt, the official PBA Annual.

[a]