Warriors 2026-27 schedule: Breaking down the biggest dates

The Stephen Curry show has its tour dates.

After a steady drip of marquee games earlier this week, the NBA released the full regular season schedule for the Golden State Warriors and the rest of the league Thursday.

The Warriors will play their first home game Oct. 23 against the Memphis Grizzlies, and it will be the only time they play inside their own arena for the first five games on their schedule.

They also close the season with seven of their final nine games on the road, a stretch that includes two dates with LeBron James and the 76ers as well as the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

The veteran roster will have to travel approximately 46,000 miles and navigate 15 back-to-backs. As long as Curry’s around, so will be the spotlight: Golden State will be featured on national television 28 times, including games on Christmas and Presidents Day.

These are the biggest dates on the Warriors’ 2026-27 schedule:

Oct 21: Opening Night

It’s practically becoming a tradition.

For the second year in a row and the third time since 2021, the Warriors will open their season against the Lakers in Los Angeles. They also hosted their Western Conference rivals to begin the 2022 season. But this year, the matchup comes with a twist.

It won’t involve LeBron James.

These are Luka Doncic’s Lakers now.

Curry went 7-9 in regular-season matchups against the Lakers during James’ run starting in 2018. Now he’ll have a different kind of test in a team built around Doncic and Austin Reaves.

Golden State started strong last season, beating the Lakers on Opening Night and winning four of their first five. It will be more difficult this year for the same reason things fell apart last year.

While all indications are Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody are doing well in their recoveries from knee surgeries, the Warriors won’t have either wing for at least the first portion of their schedule.

Oct. 23: The home opener

Not only Yaxel Lendeborg’s regular season home debut, the No. 11 overall draft pick’s first showdown with a fellow lottery selection in the Grizzlies’ Cam Boozer, taken fourth overall.

With the Warriors’ injury situation and general age of the roster, they need the 23-year-old rookie — one of the oldest players in the draft class — to be rotation-ready from the jump.

Lendeborg has looked like an instant contributor so far, taking home Summer League MVP, but he’ll have a chance to really prove himself in one of the only one-on-one matchups he’ll get against a big man taken ahead of him this past June.

Nov. 6: Moving up the leaderboards

Entering his 17th season, the Curry money machine keeps whirring and the Warriors keep announcing sellouts. In their fifth home game of the year, they’ll make some history.

It should go down as the 611th consecutive home game they’ve played in front of a sold-out crowd, surpassing the Chicago Bulls for the fifth-longest streak in NBA history.

Fittingly, their opponent will be the Miami Heat, the only team with an active streak that dates back further (683 games, since April 2010).

The Warriors’ streak began on Dec. 18, 2012, at Oracle Arena in Oakland. The Bulls’ spanned the duration of the Michael Jordan-era dynasty, running from Nov. 20, 1987, to Nov. 3, 2000.

Next up: The Boston Celtics’ 662-game streak from 1980 to 1995. The Mavericks hold the all-time record at 1,005 games, which came to an end last season.

Dec. 4-11: NBA Cup

The Warriors’ competition in the group stage round was announced earlier this week. They’ll host the Lakers in their first NBA Cup qualifier Oct. 30, visit the Spurs on Nov. 13, host Kings on Nov. 25 and meet the Blazers on the road Nov. 27 as part of Group C.

If they advance, they’ll play in the knockout rounds from Dec. 4-9. If they do not, they will play regular season games from Dec. 6-10.

Dec. 25: Christmas Day, Pt. XVI

If there is one upside to the Curry era coming to a close, at least for Warriors staffers, it is that they will finally get to spend Christmas with their families. It’s not that time yet.

For the 14th year in a row and the 16th time in the past 17 seasons, Curry and the Warriors will be featured as one of the five games on the NBA’s biggest day of the regular season.

They will tip off at 7:30 at home against the Nuggets in a redux of their 2023 matchup, which they lost 120-114 in Denver. Golden State is 16-19 all-time on the holiday.

Jan. 30-Feb. 13: A big test 

General manager Mike Dunleavy heavily implied that the Warriors will seek to make in-season upgrades to their roster, and they’ll have no better time to evaluate their needs than the stretch immediately leading up to the Feb. 11 trade deadline.

First, they’ll host the defending Western Conference champion Spurs for their only two meetings outside of the NBA Cup on Jan. 30 and Feb. 1. Then, they set out on their longest road trip of the season — six games in three time zones from Feb. 3 to 13 — that ends in a meeting with the defending champion Knicks at Madison Square Garden two days after the deadline.

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters

March 24-31: LeBron week

The Warriors were spurned in their pursuit of a generational pairing of Steph and LeBron.

Like many love interests gone afoul, space and time just might be the best cure.

In which case, good news: The Warriors won’t have to even think about LeBron until March, and they’ll get their only two matchups out of the way in the span of a week (March 24 at home, March 31 in Philadelphia).

James signed a two-year contract with the Sixers, so hopefully we’ll get to see him and Curry share the court at least two more times next season. But James is 41, Curry is 38 and both players missed a large portion of last season, so you never know when it might be the final time.

Apr. 8-9: A tough close

One of the most daunting stretches of the Warriors’ schedule comes at the very end. That might be good news for a team that will be counting on two key players returning from serious injuries, which could take some time, but it will be a challenge as they attempt to lock down a top-six seed and avoid the play-in tournament in the waning days of the regular season.

The Warriors host the Jazz in Game 82, but they will play seven of their eight games before that on the road, capped off with the final back-to-back of the season — both in Oklahoma City.

They probably won’t be able to unpack their bags for the final two weeks of the season.