WNBA Announces Changes to Regular Season, Playoff Format for 2025 Season

Big changes are coming to the WNBA in 2025.

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert holds a press conference before game one of the WNBA Finals. / Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

There will be some significant changes coming to the WNBA in 2025, league commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced Thursday.

Starting next year, the league plans to adopt a best-of-seven format for the WNBA Finals, similar to that of the NBA, moving away from the the current best-of-five format.

Additionally, the first round of the postseason will see teams alternate home court advantage throughout the best-of-three series, making it a 1-1-1 format in terms of home and away games. The current format (2-1) saw the higher seed host the first two games of the series. The lower seed only gained home court advantage if the series went three games, which none of this year's first-round matchups did.

The WNBA's regular season will also increase to 44 games per team 👏 pic.twitter.com/bxnWodcj4Y

— ESPN (@espn) October 10, 2024

There are also changes coming to the length of the regular season. Starting in 2025, the WNBA will expand its regular season schedule so that each team will play 44 games, up from the 40 games that were played in 2024.

The league is continuing to grow after a record-shattering 2024 season, thanks to the emergence of popular new stars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. A 13th franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, is joining the WNBA in 2025, too, with even more new teams set to debut in 2026.

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