Caucasus International University Becomes Georgia's First-Ever ENBL Entrant

Basketball club Caucasus International University, based in Tbilisi, has become the first Georgian side to compete in the European North Basketball League, the competition announced this week. The milestone lands at a moment when Georgian basketball is riding its highest wave of international relevance in decades, and BC CIU's entry gives the country a foothold in a league it had never previously featured in.
Georgia's basketball pedigree stretches back to the Soviet era, when Tbilisi clubs were a fixture atop the union's standings: Armia Tbilisi, later renamed Mgzavrebi Tbilisi, won Soviet titles in 1944 and 1946, while Dinamo Tbilisi added championships in 1950, 1953, 1954 and 1968. The high-water mark came on June 29, 1962, when Dinamo Tbilisi stunned Real Madrid 90-83 in Geneva to lift the European Champions Cup. After Georgia joined FIBA in 1992 following the Soviet collapse, the national team's modern era has been defined by steady progress, qualifying for EuroBasket every cycle since 2011 and, on September 7, 2025, reaching the tournament's quarterfinals for the first time with an 80-70 win over France in Riga. That run has been built on a generation of Georgian talent recognizable well beyond the Caucasus, among them Tornike Shengelia, two-time NBA champion Zaza Pachulia, Giorgi Shermadini, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Goga Bitadze and Duda Sanadze.
BC CIU arrives in the ENBL with a resume of its own. The club won the Dudu Dadiani Memorial Tournament in 2022, took bronze in the Georgian Superleague that same season, finished as Superleague runner-up in 2023/24, and captured the Zurab Sakandelidze and Mikheil Korkia Memorial Cup in 2024. The club has built its program around a dedicated academy and youth pathway, blending established and up-and-coming Georgian players with international signings, and plays out of a modern FIBA-standard arena in Tbilisi.