NBA MVP race: SGA, Wemby, Jokić, Luka, Jaylen Brown
The 2026 NBA Most Valuable Player award will be announced in late May 2026 at the league’s annual TNT-broadcast awards ceremony. The five finalists were named April 17, 2026: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama, Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić, and Jaylen Brown.
SGA is the consensus winner. The published April 17, 2026 Athletic awards-ladder ballot has him at 96 of 100 first-place votes. Every analyst projection expects this to be the most one-sided MVP selection since Stephen Curry’s unanimous 2016 win.
This page covers the structural case for each of the five finalists, the historical context for the SGA coronation, and the dark-horse case (essentially zero) for any of the other four candidates winning.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: the runaway favorite
2025-26 season averages: 32.0 points, 6.4 assists, 5.9 rebounds, 1.7 steals on 53.5% / 39.4% / 91.0% shooting splits.
Team record: 67-15, the best in the NBA, the third-best record in the post-merger NBA after the 1995-96 Bulls (72-10) and the 2015-16 Warriors (73-9).
The structural case: SGA’s 2025-26 was statistically the most valuable individual season in the NBA since Nikola Jokić’s 2021-22 (which won Jokić his second MVP). SGA led the NBA in points per game while playing the second-most minutes per game of any guard in the league. His on-off net rating splits (Thunder were +12.8 per 100 with him on the floor, +0.4 with him off) are the largest of any player in the league. Every standard advanced-stats MVP model (BPM, EPM, RAPM, LEBRON, RAPTOR) has him as the #1 player in the league. The Pyramid framework in The Book of Basketball (Ballantine, 2009) would rank a season with these net-rating splits among the all-time great individual seasons in the modern era.
The historical context: SGA, a Canadian-born player who grew up in Hamilton, Ontario before college at Kentucky, would be the third Canadian-born NBA Most Valuable Player after Steve Nash (2005, 2006) and would be the first Canadian to win the award since Nash. The Oklahoma City Thunder, who won the 2025 NBA championship over Boston in five games (with Jayson Tatum tearing his Achilles in Game 4), would be the first NBA franchise to produce back-to-back regular-season MVPs since Steph Curry’s 2015 and 2016 with the Warriors.
The dark-horse downside: None. SGA is the runaway winner. The vote will be 96 to 100 first-place ballots his way.
Victor Wembanyama: the sophomore-year breakout
2025-26 season averages: 25.5 points, 11.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 3.7 blocks, 1.4 steals on 49.5% shooting (35.7% from three).
Team record: 49-33, seventh seed in the West.
The structural case: Wemby, in his second NBA season at age 22, is already the clear best defensive player in the league. He led the NBA in blocks per game and finished second in defensive rating. His combination of 7’4” height, perimeter mobility, and three-point shooting (a top-30 league three-point volume for a center) is unprecedented in NBA history. The MVP voters who ranked him second on their ballots cited his ceiling-case argument: that any analytical projection of where the league’s best player will be in three years has Wemby above SGA.
The historical context: Wemby is the consensus 2026 Defensive Player of the Year (heavily favored, with Bam Adebayo as the second choice and Anthony Davis third). He would be the youngest sophomore-year DPOY in league history. He would not be MVP because his Spurs finished outside the top six in the West and the league’s MVP voters do not, with rare exceptions (Russell Westbrook 2017), give the award to a player on a sub-50-win team.
The dark-horse downside: A first-round playoff series against the 67-15 Thunder. If Wemby plays at his ceiling and the Spurs push the series past Game 5, the post-series MVP narrative softens; if the Spurs are swept (which they likely will be), the narrative is the structural reason SGA’s vote share goes up rather than down.
Nikola Jokić: the perennial threat
2025-26 season averages: 28.5 points, 12.5 rebounds, 9.6 assists, 1.4 steals on 60.2% / 41.8% / 81.0% shooting splits.
Team record: 51-31, fifth seed in the West.
The structural case: Jokić is, in 2026, the only player in NBA history with a career line of 25-12-9 across more than 600 regular-season games. He has won three MVPs (2021, 2022, 2024) and finished second in two others. Every advanced statistical model has him as the second-most-valuable player in the league behind SGA in 2025-26. His 2024 NBA championship (the second of his career) is the only ring on the list above; SGA, Wemby, Luka, and Brown have one combined (Brown’s 2024 with Boston).
The historical context: Jokić winning a fourth MVP would tie him with Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and LeBron James for the third-most all time (behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at 6 and Michael Jordan at 5). The vote will not happen this year because of the SGA dominance, but Jokić’s structural case for one or two more MVPs in his career is the strongest among active players over 30.
The dark-horse downside: The “voter fatigue” argument that worked against Jokić in 2023 (when Embiid won) is in play again. Jokić has finished top-2 in MVP voting five years in a row. The voting body has, in informal Athletic surveys, signaled fatigue.
Luka Dončić: the Lakers project year
2025-26 season averages: 32.7 points, 9.4 assists, 8.1 rebounds on 47.5% / 36.6% / 79.0% shooting splits.
Team record: 51-31, third seed in the West (Lakers).
The structural case: Luka was traded to the Lakers on February 1, 2025 (covered in detail on our Luka biography). The 2025-26 season is his first full year as a Laker. He is paired with LeBron James in the offensive system and has been, by every advanced metric, the most efficient he has been since his 2022-23 first-team All-NBA season. His scoring average of 32.7 is second only to SGA in the league.
The historical context: Luka has finished top-3 in MVP voting four times. He has not yet won. He would, in 2026, become the first European-born player other than Dirk Nowitzki, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Jokić to win the award. The Lakers’ 51-31 record is, however, structurally limiting: the team’s defensive rating is 22nd in the league.
The dark-horse downside: A non-trivial. If the Lakers reach the conference finals and Luka has a 30-10-10 series, the case strengthens. The MVP vote is, however, already largely cast.
Jaylen Brown: the load-the-Tatum-injury case
2025-26 season averages: 26.8 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.5 assists on 47.5% / 36.0% / 70.0% shooting splits.
Team record: 56-26, second seed in the East (Celtics).
The structural case: Brown carried the Celtics through the regular season while Jayson Tatum recovered from June 2025 Achilles surgery. Tatum returned only for the final six games of the regular season. Brown’s team record without Tatum (50-22) is the seventh-best record in the NBA among any player who started 60-plus games for a team without their second-best player available. The voting body’s “best player on a top-2 conference team” criterion has, historically, weighed in his favor; Tatum’s injury made that argument concrete.
The historical context: Brown has been an All-Star four times (2024, 2025, 2026, plus 2023). He won the 2024 Finals MVP. He has not finished top-3 in regular-season MVP voting. A first-place finish would be the upset of the decade.
The dark-horse downside: Same as Luka. A deep playoff run with Tatum still on a minutes restriction would move the post-season narrative for Brown but not the regular-season MVP vote.
The MVP announcement timeline
The NBA Awards Show is scheduled for May 27, 2026, broadcast on TNT. The MVP, DPOY, ROY, Most Improved, and Sixth Man of the Year will all be announced live. The first round of the playoffs will be over by then; the conference semifinals will be in progress.
SGA will be in Oklahoma City for the announcement. The Thunder, by every plausible bracket projection, will be deep in the conference semifinals or beyond at that point.
Gear
MVP season collector demand is real.
Panini NBA Hoops Blaster Box →
*The Book of Basketball* by Bill Simmons (Ballantine, 2009) →
Sources
- NBA.com Kia MVP ladder, April 17, 2026 edition.
- Yahoo Sports, 2026 NBA Awards full ballot tracker.
- The Athletic, John Hollinger, advanced-stats MVP analysis (April 2026).
- Basketball-Reference: NBA Most Valuable Player Award.
- ESPN, 2026 NBA Awards coverage (April 2026).
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