The WNBA season is going to be longer than ever with the new CBA

The WNBA is going to be a very different league after ratifying its new collective bargaining agreement on Tuesday. That includes when you’ll be watching the games.

One of the provisions of the CBA is the season starting sooner and ending later, per ESPN’s Alexa Philippou and Kendra Andrews.

Under the previous CBA, players were required to report for training camp by May 1, with the season starting a few weeks later. That date has reportedly now changed to April 15.

The season was also required to end by Oct. 31. That possible end date is now Nov. 21, with 2028 potentially stretching to Nov. 30 due to the Olympic break.

Those changes are mad to accommodate the league’s ongoing expansion, with the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire commencing operations this season while teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia set to to join between 2028 and 2030. The number of games played for each team will reportedly be increased to 50 in 2027 and 52 in 2029, up from 44 this year.

All of this comes with ripple effects. For starters, the moved-up training camp date further shrinks what was already a very short turnaround time between the end of the college basketball season (April 5 this year) and the start of each rookie’s professional career.

On the other end, ending the season in late November potentially throws a wrench in the plans of Project B, an upstart league scheduled to begin playing this November, and other leagues that operate during the WNBA’s offseason.

The WNBA is about to have more teams and more games. That’s going to require more time.

(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

For decades, women’s professional basketball followed a structure of its top players build their reputations in the WNBA, then play overseas to make considerably more money than their WNBA salaries. More recently, Unrivaled has become a prime option for players to make substantially more than what the WNBA was paying them. The league’s new salary scale — which will pay a minimum salary ($270,000) more than the last CBA’s supermax ($249,000) — upends that structure and positions the WNBA as a place where elite players can be paid elite salaries (such as A’ja Wilson’s incoming $1.4 million salary). What that means for other leagues remains to be seen.

That’s just one area where the WNBA is changing. Per ESPN, here are some others in the full CBA that was just ratified:

A rookie salary scale that will pay the top pick of the 2026 WNBA Draft $550,000 per year across four seasons, with the average first-round pick getting $386,000 per year
Full salary protections for lottery picks in their first year
Nursing rooms and, starting in 2027, family rooms at home arenas
Starting in 2028, practice facilities with locker rooms plus medical and bathroom facilities for exclusive use by WNBA players
A requirement that each team employs two athletic trainers, two team physicians, one strength and conditioning coach, one physical therapist, one director of sports medicine and one massage therapist, with access to a nutritionist
Up to seven guaranteed contracts per team (up from six)
WNBPA control of licensing rights for adults jerseys
An extra hotel room for dependent children 13 or younger traveling with the team
Two weeks of paid leave for nonbirthing parents