The WNBA Is About To Have Its Biggest Season Yet

The WNBA hasn’t played a game since October, but it remained in the headlines throughout the off-season thanks to months of tense negotiations between the league and its players that often seemed like they were going nowhere — and, at times, left the 30th season in doubt.

In March, however, the two sides agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that drastically increased salaries, benefits for players, and even payments for retired players. Now, the regular season is able to proceed largely unaffected, aside from a heavily compressed free agency period where some of the league’s biggest names may find a new home, a two-team expansion draft, and a college draft. But otherwise, fans and experts are eagerly looking ahead to tipoff on May 8.

“It’s such an exciting time,” says longtime women’s basketball broadcaster Debbie Antonelli, who has been an analyst for the Indiana Fever for more than 20 years. “It’s definitely a monumental shift in the way people perceive female athletes. It is generationally changing money for these players.”

And then there’s what to actually expect from play this season. Will Caitlin Clark be healthy — and, if so, what impact will she make? What will happen to the ever-popular Twitch stream duo StudBudz? And can anyone take down the Aces?

Ahead, WNBA experts predict who and what they’ll be looking out for this year.

1. Get ready for leveled-up tunnel ’fits.

With women’s sports exploding in popularity, the WNBA Players Association held firm on demands for its new CBA, bargaining with the league until late March. The deal they reached includes boosting salaries, ensuring players travel by charter flights, increasing revenue sharing, and allowing for more roster cap flexibility to allow pregnant players to protect their roster spot.

And now that the deal is done? Jordan Robinson, author of Court Queens: Celebrate the Players, Teams, and History of Women’s Basketball and host of The Women’s Hoops Show podcast, says she hopes to see signs of the historic agreement everywhere.

“The idea that these women could have generational wealth from being a professional basketball player — that’s something that their basketball ancestors couldn’t even have dreamt about,” Robinson says. “I can’t wait for WNBA players to just be stunting on everybody, rolling up in nicer cars. Tunnel ’fits are going to go up. All of these things are going to improve, because these players just have more money to spend based off their incredible talent.”

2. What will happen to StudBudz?

A quick refresher for those who weren’t sporting pink wigs last season: At the start of the 2025 season, Minnesota Lynx teammates Natisha Hiedeman and Courtney Williams began offering a behind-the-scenes look to the mundane turned entertaining moments in their lives by streaming on Instagram and TikTok, later going live on Twitch. For one of their most defining moments, Williams promised to dye her hair pink to match Hiedeman’s if their follower count reached 1,000. She later upheld her promise on a livestream from a hotel room. By July’s All-Star Game, they were broadcasting for days with thousands of fans glued to their stream, which amassed more than 80,000 followers by the start of the 2026 season. But the fan-favorite duo has a hiccup going into 2026: free agency. Hiedeman is signed with Seattle.

Which raises the question: Will StudBudz go long distance, or will another dynamic duo have their moment this year? Either way, ESPN analyst and former WNBA player Rebecca Lobo says they’ve been at the pinnacle of a generation of players for showcasing their personalities and story in an authentic way. “For years, some of us used to talk to each other and laugh about how this league will really take off if there’s a reality show of what life is like off the court,” she says. “And it feels like [these players] are, whether it’s in their Instagram Live or various other mediums on social media, comfortable showing what their real lives are like.”

No matter what happens to StudBudz, Robinson predicted there will be no shortage of content from the W’s players, pointing to stars, like Cameron Brink, who are creating content that often isn’t about the X’s and O’s of basketball at all. “I saw a clip recently of her talking about how much it costs to have a private chef,” she says. “And she’s like, ‘That was my whole WNBA salary.’ That’s such good insight.”

3. Can anyone beat A’ja Wilson and the Aces?

A’ja Wilson and the Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury in 2025 in four games, winning their third title in four years. So can Becky Hammon’s squad do it again? It’s likely hers to lose — at least when the season tips off. “[Wilson] was playing at an otherworldly level last year in the playoffs,” says Lobo.

“She is somebody who all fans should have their eye on just because she has been so, so good for a long time,” she adds, “but at the absolute height of her powers by the end of last season, which is one of the big reasons that Vegas won the championship.”

She’ll have plenty of competition, however…

4. … Including Caitlin Clark — if she stays healthy.

“She could have one of the finest and most entertaining seasons any WNBA player has ever had,” says USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, author of On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports. “The way she played her rookie year, then in USA Basketball qualifying, winning the MVP award, shows her great potential for 2026. It’s more than the three-pointers — it’s also the passing and the pace at which she plays. When she’s on, there is no one like her.”

Clark played only 13 games in the 2025 season due to injuries. But she was named tournament MVP while playing with Team USA in the FIBA Women’s World Cup Qualifiers in March, averaging 11.6 points and 6.4 assists per game.

A healthy Clark is also, of course, a guaranteed ratings boost. “Everyone,” says Antonelli, “wants to see Caitlin.”

5. Will new teams live up to the Valkyries?

The WNBA is expanding to Portland and Toronto this season, the latest in a series of league expansions. (Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia are slated to be added within the next three years.)

It was the 2025 expansion team — the Golden State Valkyries — that set a new bar for success, selling out every game and packing the arena with an enthusiastic fan base while also clinching a playoff berth in its first season.

So can the two new teams match the Valks’ success? The Valkyries were credited with making key hires, both when it came to their coaching staff and the front office. (Valkyries owner Joe Lacob also owned an American Basketball League [ABL] team — a popular women’s basketball league that launched a year before the WNBA and lasted for 2.5 seasons — the San Jose Lasers.)

“It’s hard to be an expansion team this year after the bar that Golden State set on multiple levels,” says Lobo. “But both Portland and Toronto are terrific women’s basketball markets.

“And so the hope is I’m sure that they will be able to replicate some of the off-court and fan engagement that Golden State was able to in their first year.”

With excitement for the league at a high and more talent than ever in the league, the bar set is not an impossible one to clear.