Event
basketball player selection
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)'s draft for the 2026 season was held following the 2025–26 NCAA Division I women's basketball season. This was the first draft for the league's two newest expansion teams, the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “2026 WNBA draft”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)'s draft for the 2026 season was held following the 2025–26 NCAA Division I women's basketball season. This was the first draft for the league's two newest expansion teams, the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo.
In November 2025, the WNBA announced that the 2026 WNBA Draft Lottery would be held on November 23, 2025. The lottery decided the order of the first 5 picks in the 2026 WNBA draft and was televised on ESPN in the United States. The five teams that did not qualify for 2025 WNBA playoffs participated in this draft lottery.
The lottery chances were based on the combined record from the 2024 and 2025 WNBA seasons. In the drawing, 14 balls numbered 1 to 14 were placed in a lottery machine and mixed. Four balls were drawn to determine a four-digit combination. The team assigned that four-ball combination received the No. 1 pick. The four balls were then be placed back into the machine and the process was repeated to determine the second pick. Of the three teams not selected in the drawings, the team with the worst cumulative two-year record was selected third; the team with the next worst record selected fourth; and the remaining team, fifth.
A representative from the league's independent accounting firm, Ernst & Young, was in attendance to oversee the draft lottery process.
Note: The team selected for the No. 1 pick in the lottery is noted below in bold text.
Under the 2026 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the WNBA and its players' union, ratified before this draft and mostly unchanged from the previous CBA, draft eligibility for players (not defined as "international") requires the following to be true:
Players who are younger than the draft's cutoff age and are scheduled to receive their bachelor's degree within three months of the draft date will only be eligible if the calendar year of the draft is no earlier than the fourth year after their high school graduation.
Players with remaining college eligibility but who do meet the cutoff age criteria must notify WNBA headquarters of their intent to enter the draft no later than 10 days before the draft date, and must renounce any remaining college eligibility to do so. For the 2026 draft, the date fell on April 3. A separate notification timetable is provided for players involved in postseason tournaments (i.e. the NCAA Division I tournament); those players (normally) must declare for the draft within 24 hours of their final collegiate game.
"International players" are defined as those for whom all of the following is true:
State Street Investment Management, promoting the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (known by its ticker symbol "SPY"), was the presenting sponsor of the event, replacing previous presenting sponsor State Farm. State Street began a multi-year sponsorship of the league in September 2025.
Text from the Wikipedia article “2026 WNBA draft”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.