All 15 WNBA groups launched a 44-game 2026 schedule on Wednesday afternoon, shepherding within the league’s thirtieth season and the league’s two latest groups in Toronto and Portland. But, as an alternative of pleasure, the announcement was met with pure confusion. How, if the WNBA has but to return to phrases with its gamers on a Collective Bargaining Settlement, is it doable to schedule a season? Why launch the schedule if we don’t know for sure there’ll even BE a 2026 WNBA season?
Apparently, it comes all the way down to league operations, venue reserving, and logistics, per ESPN’s Alexa Philippou. Groups want time to promote ticket packages, make broadcast plans, and make sure the arenas are booked earlier than different occasions are available in and take the dates they want.
When the groups across the WNBA began teasing an announcement for this afternoon, there was hypothesis on what it may very well be. Particularly figuring out there was no actual information concerning the CBA negotiations in over per week. A thirtieth anniversary celebration? Jersey updates? Merchandise? If it had been the CBA itself, the announcement would have in all probability been leaked to a journalist and never teased out by the league.
Absolutely, followers thought, they couldn’t launch the dates with no contract? Effectively, that was flawed.
The WNBA is planning a 44-game season for 2026, beginning on Might 8 and ending on Sept. 24, with the playoffs to comply with. There will likely be a break from Aug. 31 to Sept. 16 for the FIBA Girls’s World Cup in Germany, with the common season resuming for simply over per week after that break. One other complicated facet of the 2026 marketing campaign is taking a two-and-a-half-week break, proper when the season is ramping up, and the playoffs are simply across the nook. In earlier years, the WNBA has condensed the season throughout a World Cup yr, ending earlier than the match, but with 44-games now, that’s not doable.
The WNBA All-Star Sport will occur in Chicago on July 24 and 25. The WNBA may even be welcoming its first worldwide group in Toronto, and the Tempo will play two video games in Vancouver on Aug. 21 and 23, in addition to two in Montreal on July 10 and 12. The remainder of Toronto’s dwelling video games will likely be performed of their dwelling metropolis, with three particular video games at Scotiabank Area and the remaining on the Tempo’s dwelling enviornment of Coca Cola Coliseum.
But, all of this must be taken with a grain of salt. There may be nonetheless no assure that there will likely be a 2026 WNBA season, or that this present schedule will maintain. There have been few latest updates on the state of CBA negotiations, and the league and gamers nonetheless appear far aside on their desires and wishes. Perhaps it is a little bit of a push to get the ball rolling on that, but it surely was nonetheless unusual to see so many straight-faced updates on a season that’s removed from assured to even happen.
