The WNBA announced plans to expand the league’s regular season to 50 games beginning with the 2027 campaign on Wednesday afternoon.
The league currently features a 44 game regular season, but as the league continues to grow, leadership is leaning into additional ways to bring fans more chances to catch the action, and ownership additional dates to generate revenue.
“Demand for the WNBA has never been greater, and expanding to a 50-game regular season reflects the extraordinary momentum we are seeing across the league,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert. “This move reflects our commitment to growing the game and creating more opportunities for fans to watch the best players in the world and experience the extraordinary talent and competition that define the WNBA.”
With the league and the player’s union ratifying a new collective bargaining agreement earlier this year, the WNBA was able to add the 6 additional games onto its current schedule. As per the terms of the new CBA, the season can end no later than November 21st.
This in turn means that the league will either need to start sooner, or feature a more condensed schedule. The league stated that “Additional details regarding the 2027 WNBA regular season schedule, including footprint and key dates, will be announced at a later date”, meaning fans won’t know which avenue the league will be exploring quite yet.
The 2026 WNBA regular season kicked off on May 8th, with the preseason having gotten underway on April 25th. This year featured a slightly truncated lead up to the start of the season due to the drawn out nature of the CBA negotiations.
According to reports, the league also has the right to explore adding 2 additional games to the regular season in time for the 2029 WNBA campaign. If exercised, that would bring the total number to 52 regular season matchups plus playoffs.
Photo: Lorie Shaull. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.