Chelyabinsk

Chelyabinsk go into the new season as reigning champions of the Russian Super League. They also play in the Russian Cup. The club, ЧБК (the Chelyabinsk Basketball Team), calls itself the "Victory Pack" and plays in blue and orange.

The climb was quick. When the club started in 2014 it was called Dynamo (Chelyabinsk), a name the city had already lost. The original Dynamo, founded in 1975, folded in 2010 for lack of funding and because it could not meet the arena requirements. It later resurfaced in Magnitogorsk, which left Chelyabinsk without a top-level side. The new Dynamo filled that gap, and in 2017 it became Chelbasket.

The 2022/23 season in the Higher League set up the promotion. The team won the regular season and took silver, and it had already won the Tarakanov Cup in 2022. The Super League followed from 2023/24. That earlier run of results is why the 2026 title reads as the end of a sequence and not a surprise.

The club is run by its president, Nikolai Sandakov. Its academy has supplied Andrey Zubkov, born in 1991, who came through the Dynamo-Teplostroy youth team. He went on to win the VTB United League in 2021/22.