In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the WNBA and the Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association reached a handshake agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, which they billed as “transformational.”
The landmark deal, which still awaits approval from the rank-and-file and the WNBA Board of Governors, includes soaring salaries, a radically improved revenue-share model for players and better play benefits.
Among the most notable changes is a salary cap starting at $7 million in 2026 — up from $1.5 million in 2025 — and an average of 20 percent revenue share across the lifetime of the deal, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.
The revenue-share component is believed to be gross revenue, which is revenue after expenses — a key detail the players’ union had been fighting for.
The new deal reportedly includes a $1.4 million supermax contract, which equates to a 20 percent cap hit in Year 1.
The average salary is projected to be around $600,000 with the minimum salaries around $300,000.
Those numbers are a far cry from the previous CBA’s benchmarks. In 2025, the league’s minimum salary was $66,079 and the supermax was $249,244.
The major jump in pay follows the WNBA’s boom in popularity over the past few seasons.
