WNBA Teams

The WNBA just turned 30 — and it has never been bigger. Born in 1996, tipping off in 1997 with eight teams, the league spent its first quarter-century fighting for oxygen: for TV windows, for charter flights, for the simple respect of being treated like a major league. Then the dam broke. The last three seasons have produced the twelve largest audiences since 2000 — every single one of them involving Caitlin Clark — attendance records are falling across the map, and expansion fees have gone from rounding errors to nine figures. Thirty years in, the W is the fastest-growing story in American sports.

The map keeps growing. The Golden State Valkyries arrived in 2025 and played like they'd been here forever — a playoff team in year two, the 2026 No. 2 seed at 32–12, winning a first-round series against Dallas. Then 2026 brought two more: the Portland Fire, reviving the name of the franchise that played from 2000 to 2002, and the Toronto Tempo, the league's first team outside the United States. Fifteen teams, two countries — and three more, in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia, already on the runway.

The 2026 regular season was a showcase. The Minnesota Lynx finished 33–11, the league's best record, with a record 18 road wins. The Las Vegas Aces' A'ja Wilson was named MVP for the fifth time — 26.2 points a game, her third straight scoring title, 1.9 blocks a game, 1,073 points, and the Associated Press Player of the Year award for the third year running. The Indiana Fever's Kelsey Mitchell broke Wilson's single-season scoring record with 1,086 points. Clark finished third in scoring and second in assists. Minnesota's Olivia Miles — drafted with a pick that once belonged to Chicago — scored more points than any rookie in league history and ran away with Rookie of the Year. Atlanta's Angel Reese, in her first season with the Dream, won Defensive Player of the Year with 46 of 74 votes — the first DPOY in franchise history. Phoenix's Alyssa Thomas broke her own single-season assist record with 358. Minnesota's Kayla McBride hit a WNBA-record 10 threes in a game. The Liberty won their second Commissioner's Cup. Fourteen of fifteen teams cracked a 100 offensive rating. The league had never been this deep.

Then the playoffs rewrote the script. The No. 1-seeded Lynx — 33 wins, the title favorites — got swept by the No. 8 Liberty, the first time an eight seed has ever beaten a one seed in WNBA history. The fourth-seeded Dream swept fifth-seeded Washington for their first series win in a decade. The Valkyries took down Dallas in three. The defending-champion Aces survived Indiana in three. The semifinals — Dream vs. Liberty, Valkyries vs. Aces — tipped off October 4, with the Finals running through October 31. (The season even paused for seventeen days in September for the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup in Berlin — the W's global footprint on full display.)

The season had subplots everywhere. The Indiana Fever — the league's No. 1 offense, with Kelsey Mitchell and Caitlin Clark both finishing top-three in scoring — bowed out in the first round to the Aces, a disappointment for a championship-contending roster that spent a third straight year as the No. 6 seed. The Phoenix Mercury, a Finals team in 2025, missed the playoffs entirely amid a 2–8 start they never recovered from, with Alyssa Thomas's record assist season the lone bright spot. Golden State's second-year leap to the No. 2 seed announced the Valkyries as a genuine power, not a novelty. And the MVP race — Wilson's fifth, with rookie Olivia Miles drawing real first-place support as the best player on the best team — was the deepest the league has seen in years.

Off the court, the 30th season was a coronation of how far the league has come. The Liberty's Commissioner's Cup run played to a celebrity row at Barclays — Spike Lee and Tom Brady courtside for the clincher. The Valkyries packed their building night after night. The Fever's road games became events. And with a new media-rights era, charter travel, and three more expansion franchises on the way, the business of the W has finally caught up to the basketball — which was always the point.

This is WNBA Rewind. Every team below gets the full treatment: the record, the schedule, the results, the roster — and the story of the franchise, from the 1997 originals to the 2026 expansion babies. Follow the Dream's first real title push since 2013, the Liberty's historic run as the most dangerous eight seed ever, the Lynx picking up the pieces of a stunning exit, the Aces' championship defense, the Valkyries' dream start, the Sky's long road back, and the Fire and Tempo writing their first chapters. The league's thirtieth season is its best one. Start with your team.