The MVP Race Is Over. Vezenkov Wins.

Thirty-eight rounds. Twenty teams. One player who made the argument impossible to ignore from October through April.

Sasha Vezenkov is the 2025-26 EuroLeague MVP. It is not close.

1. Sasha Vezenkov — Olympiacos Piraeus

The numbers first: 19.4 points per game, 6.6 rebounds, a PIR of 23.1 — the highest in the league. Three MVP of the Round awards. In 27 appearances, he finished in single digits exactly once. He scored 20 or more points on 14 separate occasions. He did all of this while Olympiacos navigated a season disrupted by injuries to multiple rotation players, and still finished first in the standings.

Vezenkov is the reason Olympiacos is the number one seed. That sentence alone usually ends the MVP conversation — and it should here.

What makes him exceptional is not just the volume. It is the consistency and the method. He does not need isolation. He does not need the ball in his hands to be dangerous. His off-ball movement, his ability to cut at exactly the right moment, his quick release on catch-and-shoot opportunities — these are the skills that make elite defenders irrelevant. By the time the defense recognizes the danger, the ball is already through the net.

Vezenkov won this award in 2022-23 with CSKA Moscow. He is on the verge of winning it again with a different club, in a different system, at a higher level of competition. That is not coincidence. That is sustained excellence.

Kendrick Nunn — his own closest rival — said it publicly and without hesitation: Vezenkov is the MVP. When the reigning champion concedes the award to his competitor, the debate is settled.

2. Kendrick Nunn — Panathinaikos Athens

The reigning MVP did not have the season he was supposed to have. Injuries disrupted his rhythm at critical moments. Panathinaikos underperformed relative to their enormous roster investment. The team finished seventh — a result that, in any other season, would have disqualified a player from serious MVP consideration.

None of that changes what Nunn did when he was healthy and available. He led the league in scoring at 19.0 points per game. His 32-point, six-assist performance against Olympiacos — in a loss, with a PIR of 40 — was the single most individually brilliant game of the regular season. His 39 PIR against Partizan reminded anyone who had forgotten why this man was the best player in Europe twelve months ago.

The problem was availability and team success, the two factors that EuroLeague MVP voting has always weighted heavily. Nunn missed games at the worst possible moments. Panathinaikos lost without him and sometimes struggled with him. A 22-16 record and a Play-In berth is not the platform from which MVPs are typically awarded.

He remains one of the three best players in Europe. This season just belonged to someone else.

3. Sylvain Francisco — Zalgiris Kaunas

The most underappreciated player in the MVP conversation. Francisco led the league in assists at 6.4 per game, averaged 16.7 points, and was the primary reason Zalgiris finished fifth — a result that significantly exceeded preseason expectations for a club with far fewer resources than the teams above them in the standings.

Francisco is the EuroLeague's best point guard when he is on — not just a scorer, not just a distributor, but both simultaneously, in a way that very few guards in European basketball can replicate. He won the October MVP of the Month award and is one of only five players this season with multiple MVP of the Round honors. On a bigger stage, with a more prominent club, he would have been a first-place vote candidate.

What keeps him third is the gap between Zalgiris's fifth-place finish and the teams above them. MVP voters reward team success, and Francisco's team finished behind four clubs with larger rosters and bigger budgets. That he kept pace with them individually is the argument — and it is a strong one.

He is 28 years old. He is playing the best basketball of his career. The EuroLeague should know his name better than it does.