The 1996–97 FIBA EuroLeague was the 40th installment of the European top-tier level professional club competition for basketball clubs (now called simply EuroLeague).

This season was the first edition of the competition that took the shortened name of FIBA EuroLeague, as the league's official name.

For the 1996–1997 EuroLeague, the countries are allocated places according to their place on the FIBA country rankings, which takes into account their performance in European competitions from 1993–94 to 1995–96.

[1] The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:

(The individual scores and standings of the First stage are accumulated in the Qualification round) If one or more clubs are level on won-lost record, tiebreakers are applied in the following order: