2026 WNBA expansion draft set for April 3, with Fire and Tempo poised to start building inaugural rosters
Portland and Toronto will first take part in the W's expansion draft before joining the rest of the league's teams for the collegiate draft.
The WNBA’s new collective bargaining agreement paved the way for a league with higher player compensation, more games and more resources . The W is growing, and its two new franchises are at the forefront of that amplification. The Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo will debut this season, running the league’s current total to 15 teams.
The Fire and Tempo will begin constructing their inaugural rosters on April 3 when the W holds its expansion draft. Before that, though, there will be a coin toss on Friday, as the league detailed in its news release Wednesday . Draft your Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team for the 2026 MLB Season The winning team will choose if it wants the first pick in the expansion draft or the higher pick of the two teams in this year’s collegiate draft.
In other words, the team that wins the coin toss will pick between going first in a two-team, two-round snake draft or going sixth rather than seventh in the first round of the annual draft, which will take place on April 13. Even if the team that wins the toss opts for the higher pick in the collegiate draft, it will still alternate that placement with the other expansion team over the three rounds. In that scenario, the team would pick sixth in the first round, seventh in the second round and sixth again in the third round.
Conversely, the other team would pick seventh in the first and third rounds and sixth in the second round. WNBA Expansion Draft 2026 Presented By State Street Investment Management Spy Set for Friday, April 3 on ESPN pic. twitter.