WNBA 2027: what we know about the season so far

The WNBA's 2026 season ended on October 31 with the Golden State Valkyries as first-time champions after the first Game 7 in the history of the Finals. The 2027 season is months away and the league has not yet published a start date or a schedule. Some things about 2027 are already fixed, though. Here is the list, with the unknowns kept separate.

What is settled

The regular season gets longer. The league announced in June that 2027 will have 50 regular-season games per team, up from 44 in 2025 and 2026, plus a full playoff. NBC Sports reported the change and the reasoning: there is no major FIBA tournament in 2027 as there was this year, the new labor deal lets the league pick up to 50 games in 2027 and 2028, and a bigger league needs more games for every team to meet every opponent more than once.

A new labor deal runs through 2032. The league and the players' union agreed in March 2026 on a seven-year agreement, which Wikipedia describes as tying player pay to league revenue for the first time and raising the team salary cap from $1.5 million to $7 million. It also narrows the "core" tag teams can use to keep a star: a player can be cored at most twice, and from 2027 players with seven or more years of experience cannot be cored. That matters for free agency next spring.

Connecticut becomes Houston. The Connecticut Sun finished their last season in Uncasville in 2026. Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta bought the franchise to move it to Houston as a revived Houston Comets, starting in 2027. The league will still have 15 teams.

Two more arena changes. The Atlanta Dream, who played the 2026 Finals while using Gateway Center Arena, plan to move into State Farm Arena full time in 2027. The Dallas Wings will play 2027 in the Mavericks' arena before a separate downtown venue in 2028.

Expansion is on a timetable. The league announced in June 2025 that Cleveland (the Sirens) will begin play in 2028, Detroit in 2029 and Philadelphia in 2030.

The playoff format stays the same

Eight teams make the playoffs regardless of conference, seeded by record. The quarterfinals are best-of-three, the semifinals best-of-five, and the Finals best-of-seven, with the higher seed getting home-court advantage in each series.

TV for 2027

The WNBA's media deals with ESPN, NBC and Amazon Prime Video are 11-year agreements that started in 2026, so 2027 is year two. Based on the 2026 pattern, you can expect national games across ABC and ESPN, NBC, Peacock and NBCSN, USA Network, Prime Video, CBS and Paramount+, and ION. The 2026 playoffs show how fragmented that is: NBC and Peacock showed a semifinal series, USA Network showed most of the Finals with simulcasts on Peacock, and Prime Video and ESPN each had first-round series. Local TV for some teams is on free streaming (Victory+ for the Lynx and Dream) and in Portland on a local broadcast station.

We will not guess the 2027 window-by-window schedule. The league publishes it later. When it is out, the WNBA hub and the schedule page will be updated.

What has not been announced

Start date and schedule release date for 2027.
Draft date and lottery date. The 2026 draft was on April 13, 2026. The 2027 date is not in our sources.
Houston's team name and arena details beyond the "Comets" name in Wikipedia.
Free-agency window. Under the new deal the core changes start in 2027, but we have not seen the exact dates.
Prices. League Pass and the streaming services change often, and we do not print a price we cannot source.

Note. Everything above is the state of play on November 1, 2026, taken from Wikipedia and an NBC Sports report. Neither the league nor the union pages were read: wnba.com blocks AI tools, and we follow that.