NEW YORK -- Looking like a season, how u?
After eight straight days and over 100 hours of talks, the WNBA and the Players' Association finally came to an agreement for their next Collective Bargaining Agreement. Annie Costabile of Front Office Sports broke the news.
BREAKING: The WNBA and WNBPA have reached a tentative verbal agreement for a new CBA, sources tell me. Term sheet will now go to the players and WNBA Board of Governors for a vote to ratify the new agreement.
— Annie Costabile (@AnnieCostabile) March 18, 2026
With the WNBA season in danger of being delayed, the league and its players came to an agreement at the 11th hour. After the league famously went six weeks without a proposal, they made a deadline date of March 10th for them to come up with an agreement or else the season would get delayed. March 10th came and went and then WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said that they had to get this done by Monday, March 16th. While that date passed by as well, they continued to negotiate before they came to this agreement on early Wednesday morning.
The CBA hasn't been released yet but the agreement was all about the salary cap, revenue share, and housing, among other things. The league should be giving players million dollar salaries for the first time in their history.
The Players' Union wanted a $10.5 million salary cap while the league's counter was $5.55 million. They bumped it up to $5.65 mil and then $6.25 million as the Union lowered their number to $9.5 million, which the league said was "unrealistic."
Revenue share was also a fight between the two parties. From ESPN:
"The league and union have offered different systems to determine player salaries. The WNBA has proposed that players receive, on average, over 70% of net revenue (revenue after deducting expenses), while the union's last known offer asked for 26% of gross revenue (revenue before expenses) over the lifetime of the agreement."
The CBA should be ratified within the next few weeks. Commissioner Engelbert confirmed that they did avoid the schedule changes by getting this agreement done.
Engelbert confirmed the extended negotiations avoided any impacts to the 2026 schedule.
— Alexa Philippou (@alexaphilippou) March 18, 2026
Training camp is set to open on April 19, followed by preseason games beginning April 25 and the start of the regular season on May 8. https://t.co/hB0JIAx86a
The league is going to have a crunched schedule before the 2026 WNBA season starts on May 8th. They still have the two expansion drafts coming up for the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire. The league still has to take care of free agency and it should be a historic one because a lot of players are without deals after the 2025 campaign.
The WNBA college draft is set to take place on April 14th. Training camp starts on April 19th and then preseason begins on April 25th.
Once the ratification is done, then it's off to the races for the Women's National Basketball Association.
