{"id":322823,"date":"2026-05-19T13:02:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322823\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T13:02:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:02:28","slug":"pwhl-expanding-to-san-jose-in-2026-27-season-for-leagues-12th-franchise-source-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322823\/","title":{"rendered":"PWHL expanding to San Jose in 2026-27 season for league\u2019s 12th franchise: Source"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League is headed for the Bay Area, choosing San Jose<\/a>, Calif., as its fourth and final expansion team for the 2026-27 season, a source briefed on the situation confirmed to The Athletic on Monday.<\/p>\n

The league is expected to announce San Jose as the home of its 12th franchise Tuesday afternoon at an announced \u201cmajor press conference related to a landmark sports announcement\u201d at SAP Center, where the NHL\u2019s San Jose Sharks<\/a> play.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u00a0raised San Jose<\/a> as a strong contender earlier this month, and last week, the Hockey News and Associated Press reported the city had been chosen as the PWHL\u2019s latest expansion market.<\/p>\n

San Jose follows Detroit<\/a>, Las Vegas and Hamilton as part of the league\u2019s second wave of expansion and doubles the league\u2019s size since it debuted in 2024 with six teams in Toronto<\/a>, Ottawa<\/a>, Montreal<\/a>, Boston, New York and Minnesota<\/a>. The PWHL expanded for the first time last year, adding the Vancouver Goldeneyes and Seattle Torrent.<\/p>\n

The San Jose franchise will most likely play at the SAP Center, which is undergoing a $425 million renovation to modernize the rink.<\/p>\n

The Bay Area has become a premier hub for women\u2019s sports with the additions of NWSL and WNBA franchises. Bay FC broke an NWSL attendance record with over 40,000 fans at Oracle Park in 2025 (a record since broken by the league\u2019s newest team, the Denver Summit FC). The Golden State Valkyries had the WNBA\u2019s best average attendance with over 18,000 fans per game and became the first franchise valued at $1 billion, according to CNBC, just one season into their existence.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The Bay Area also topped The Athletic\u2019s list of best women\u2019s sports cities<\/a> back in November.<\/p>\n

Adding Vegas and San Jose gives the PWHL a stronger, four-team foothold on the West Coast and should improve travel, which was an issue to some degree for the league\u2019s lone West Coast teams (Vancouver and Seattle) this season. Both expansion teams finished in the bottom two in the league standings in their inaugural seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re both struggling,\u201d said Vancouver coach Brian Idalski after a two-week trip that ended last month. \u201cThere\u2019s something there. There\u2019s something with the travel and us going back and forth that\u2019s happening to our bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move also makes the league more geographically balanced with four teams in the West, two teams in the Midwest and five others in the East.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The Athletic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sports Business, Women’s Hockey<\/p>\n

2026 The Athletic Media Company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League is headed for the Bay Area, choosing San Jose, Calif., as its fourth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[794,12005,18739,4226,67310,134478,129019,88,90,89,98,2577,1066,13431],"class_list":["post-322823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-detroit","tag-expansion-team","tag-golden-state-valkyries","tag-minnesota","tag-montreal","tag-ottawa","tag-pwhl","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-sap-center","tag-the-bay-area","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}