Telenet Giants Antwerp

A merger, a rename, and a sponsor on the shirt

The club now trading as Windrose Giants Antwerp was assembled in 1995 out of a merger between Sobabee and Racing Mechelen, and spent its first decade as Racing Basket Antwerpen. The Giants name arrived in 2006. The Telenet prefix that still turns up in fixture lists, ticketing systems and European schedules belongs to a previous era: a sponsorship deal announced in July 2024 put Windrose on the shirt, and the team has played under that name since.

Home is the Lotto Arena, the compact hall alongside the Sportpaleis in Antwerp. The club's attendance record was set next door rather than in it — 17,135 for a match against Spirou Charleroi on 31 January 2015, which remains the benchmark figure for Belgian basketball. For everything short of that kind of occasion, the Lotto Arena is the room, and it has been the club's address throughout the modern era.

One championship, and a long wait for the second

For most of its existence the league record read a single line: champions of Belgium in 1999–2000, and nothing after it. The Cup was kinder, with six wins across the years, but the title itself sat elsewhere, and from the early 2010s it sat almost exclusively in Ostend. Filou Oostende took fourteen Belgian championships in a row. The last club to interrupt that sequence before Antwerp did was Spirou Charleroi, in 2011.

The nearest thing to a high point in the intervening years came in Europe rather than at home. In 2018–19 the Giants reached the Basketball Champions League Final Four and finished third, having lost their semi-final to Iberostar Tenerife. It is still the deepest continental run in the club's history, and the reason the BCL treats Antwerp as a returning participant rather than a newcomer. Roel Moors, a former Giants player whose number 4 has been retired by the club, is the head coach who has taken them back into that competition.

The treble, and the overtime that ended a dynasty

The Cup came first. On 23 March 2026, in the 72nd edition of the Belgian Cup, Antwerp beat the Leuven Bears 80–72 in the final for a sixth title in the competition. They also finished top of the BNXT League regular season and are recorded as BNXT League champions for 2025–26, with Filou Oostende as runners-up. The club itself counts the year as a treble: the Cup, the BNXT League and the Belgian play-off title.

The play-off route was a quarter-final won 2–0 against Val-Dieu Spirou, by 109–92 and 93–77, then a semi-final taken 3–1 from Hubo Limburg United — 88–73, 74–87, 84–73 and 91–79. The final against Oostende went the distance: 100–83, 69–79, 76–81, 70–69, and then a fifth game.

That decider, on 13 June 2026, needed an extra period. Marcus Domask hit consecutive three-pointers with eighteen seconds left in regulation to tie the match at 77–77, and Antwerp won it 89–84 in overtime. Captain Rasheed Bello finished with 15 points, six rebounds and seven assists, produced the steal that broke the deadlock and the free throws that closed it out, and was named finals MVP. The bench contributed 42 of the 89 points. Both sides shot well from the line, Antwerp at 81 per cent and Oostende at 87. Tickets for the game had gone in under 24 hours, and Sporza's report from a thundering Lotto Arena recorded a first quarter of threes and dunks from both teams before either side showed any sign of title nerves. It ended a fourteen-year Ostend monopoly and a 26-year wait in Antwerp.

The champions have been taken apart and rebuilt

Winning it cost them the team that won it. Bello left in the summer of 2026, and so did Yoeri Schoepen, Elias Lasisi, Andrew Funk and Feie Tallir — five departures including the captain and the finals MVP. Five arrived in their place: Noël Coleman, Jehloni James, Cesare Edwards, Jacari White and Nijel Pack.

Continuity comes from the players who stayed. Enoch Cheeks, Letto Van Drom, Kevin Tumba, Niels De Ridder and Vincent Kesteloot are all in the 2026–27 squad, with Moors retained as head coach and Christophe Beghin and Tom Van den Bosch as his assistants. André Kraft is team manager and Björn Verhoeven is club president. The season is the 32nd in the club's existence.

The competition they defend

The BNXT League is the cross-border Belgian and Dutch competition, and it changed shape in 2024–25. Rather than splitting into Elite Gold and Elite Silver groups after a cross-border phase, as it did from 2021–22 to 2023–24, every team now plays each other home and away in a single regular season, the leading clubs from each country contest national play-offs, and the two national winners meet for the BNXT championship. The 2025–26 edition ran with eighteen clubs from the two countries.

The roll of champions before Antwerp reads ZZ Leiden in 2021–22 and 2022–23, Filou Oostende in 2023–24 and Kangoeroes Basket Mechelen in 2024–25 — no club has held it twice running, and Leiden's two remain the record. Antwerp inherit the title from a league that has changed hands every season since its creation.

September 2026: three competitions inside a fortnight

The current campaign opens on the road. A Belgian Cup last-16 tie away at BC L'9 Flénu-Frameries is set for Thursday 24 September 2026 at 20:30, and two days later, on Saturday 26 September at 20:30, Antwerp play the BNXT Supercup against the Dutch champions Landstede Hammers at the Landstede Sportcentrum in Zwolle. It is the fifth edition of the match between the two national title-holders.

Europe follows in October. Winning the domestic title earned a direct place in the Basketball Champions League regular season, which starts on 6 October 2026 with 32 teams in eight groups of four playing home and away. Antwerp are in Group C alongside AEK of Greece, Falco KC Szombathely of Hungary and Salon Vilpas of Finland. Group winners go straight to the round of 16; the second and third-placed sides drop into play-ins for the remaining places.

Domestically the club is back in the BNXT League and the Lotto Basketball Cup, defending both the league and the play-off title it won in June. Season tickets for 2026–27 are on sale and include free De Lijn public transport on match days, one of the few concrete perks the club attaches to the package.