The WNBA announced Wednesday its full schedule for the 2025 playoffs, which will tip off on Sept. 13 and extend as far as Oct. 17.
Here are the tentative dates for each round:
The conclusion to this year’s postseason will be a little different after the WNBA adopted a best-of-seven format for the Finals. A champion had previously been decided over a five-game series.
The higher seed in the Finals will host the first two games and then Games 5 and 7 if necessary.
The league also tweaked the travel schedule for the first round. It will utilize a 1-1-1 structure with the teams alternating home-court advantage.
Under the old rules, the higher seed hosted the first two games, which presented a situation where the better regular season team would have to hit the road for a winner-take-all Game 3.
“The new 1-1-1 structure for the First Round of the WNBA Playoffs presented by Google will guarantee a home game for both teams in a series, which was a priority based on discussions with the WNBA’s team presidents, head coaches, general managers and the Competition Committee,” said head of league operations Bethany Donaphin last October.
The Minnesota Lynx are all but assured of claiming the No. 1 overall seed. They own a 6.5-game lead on the next closest teams with 10 games to play.
Beyond that, the playoff bracket could shift in a lot of ways before Sept. 13. A half-game separates the second-place New York Liberty from the Las Vegas Aces in fifth. Further down the standings, three games are all that stand between the sixth-place Indiana Fever and the 10th-place Washington Mystics.