{"id":560841,"date":"2026-03-26T00:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T00:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560841\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T00:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T00:05:08","slug":"2026-wnba-expansion-draft-set-for-april-3-with-fire-and-tempo-poised-to-start-building-inaugural-rosters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560841\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 WNBA expansion draft set for April 3, with Fire and Tempo poised to start building inaugural rosters"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WNBA\u2019s new collective bargaining agreement<\/a> paved the way for a league with higher player compensation, more games and more resources<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s current total to 15 teams.<\/p>\n

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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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

Whom the Fire, Tempo can select in the expansion draft<\/p>\n

By Sunday, each of the WNBA\u2019s existing 13 teams will submit a roster list to the league office that will be comprised of every player a team had the rights to on the final day of last year\u2019s regular season.<\/p>\n

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Each team will designate a maximum of five \u201cprotected players,\u201d who will not be available for selection during the expansion draft. The rest of the players will, on the other hand, be up for the taking as \u201cunprotected players.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, within those classifications, according to the W\u2019s release, \u201cany player who has completed the playing services called for by her [previous] player contract and has five or more years of service as of the end of the 2025 season must be designated on the roster list as a \u2018potential unrestricted free agent.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fire and Tempo can each select only one \u201cpotential unrestricted free agent\u201d in the expansion draft.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s important to note, however, that there\u2019s no limit on selecting other players not currently signed to a contract for the 2026 season who don\u2019t qualify for the \u201cpotential unrestricted free agent\u201d distinction. The selecting team will receive whatever rights to that player that the existing team would have had if said player wasn\u2019t picked in the expansion draft, per the league\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

In December 2024, ahead of their first WNBA season, the Golden State Valkyries participated in an expansion draft. But they weren\u2019t drafting with another expansion team. Golden State had the opportunity to take one player from each of the then-existing 12 teams in the W. The Valkyries ended up with 11 players, such as Kayla Thornton (from the New York Liberty) and Veronica Burton (from the Connecticut Sun). Those two wound up ranking first and second on the team in scoring.<\/p>\n

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A knee injury cut Thornton\u2019s All-Star season short<\/a>, but Burton earned WNBA Most Improved Player honors<\/a> and their leader, Natalie Nakase, was named WNBA Coach of the Year<\/a>, as Golden State became the W\u2019s first expansion team to reach the playoffs in its inaugural season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cadence of this year\u2019s expansion draft<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s expansion draft will feature just two rounds. As mentioned above, it will be a snake draft, meaning that the team that picks first will then pick second in the second round.<\/p>\n

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The Fire, who will be coached by former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant Alex Sarama, and the Tempo, who will be coached by former New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury head coach Sandy Brondello<\/a>, will alternate selections, pulling from the pool of \u201cunprotected players.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the process, both teams will acquire each selected player\u2019s contract or their negotiating rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA\u2019s new collective bargaining agreement paved the way for a league with higher player compensation, more games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,2357,216681,3458,75786,75787,18088,1612,4660,3457,3461,208923,82,45963,25737,630],"class_list":["post-560841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-collegiate-draft","tag-connecticut-sun","tag-expansion-draft","tag-expansion-team","tag-golden-state","tag-golden-state-valkyries","tag-kayla-thornton","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-phoenix-mercury","tag-snake-draft","tag-sports","tag-toronto-tempo","tag-veronica-burton","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}