The 2026 WNBA Commissioner's Cup, the sixth edition of the league's in-season competition, will tip off on Monday night. Over the next two-plus weeks, all 15 teams will battle for a spot in the championship game, to be played on June 30, and the right to compete for their share of a $500,000 prize pool.
The Commissioner's Cup was originally slated to debut in 2020, but was pushed back to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to adding some stakes to the regular season, the in-season tournament also initially served as a test run for the NBA Cup, which debuted two years later in 2023.
Ahead of the 2026 tournament, here's everything you need to know about the Commissioner's Cup:
What is the format?
Conferences are irrelevant for the playoffs, but they do still matter for the Commissioner's Cup.
In the pool play phase of the Cup, each team plays each team in its conference once. Because the conferences are imbalanced -- there are seven teams in the Eastern Conference and eight teams in the Western Conference -- each Eastern Conference team will play six games and each Western Conference team will play seven games.
The team with the best record in pool play from each conference will advance to the championship game, and the team with the best overall winning percentage -- to account for the uneven number of games between conferences -- in Cup games will host the championship.
If two teams in a conference have the same record, the head-to-head result in the Cup game will be the tiebreaker. If more than two teams in a conference have the same record, the head-to-head record in Cup games among all tied teams will be the first tiebreaker.
Schedule
Rather than breaking up the Cup games over a long period of time, every single regular-season game from June 1-17 will count as a Cup game. Overall, there will be 50 Cup games -- 49 in the initial phase, plus the championship. The championship will not count as a regular-season game.
There will be several games on CBS during the initial phase of the Cup:
- Saturday, June 6: Indiana Fever at New York Liberty, 8 p.m. ET -- CBS
- Saturday, June 13: Minnesota Lynx at Las Vegas Aces, 8 p.m. ET -- CBS
The full schedule can be found here.
The championship is set for June 30, and there will be a slight break in the regular-season schedule on either side of the title game to accommodate the teams that qualify. There will be no regular-season games from June 29 to July 1.
How much money do players get for winning the Cup?
The full prize pool for the Commissioner's Cup is $500,000.
Each player from the winning team will receive $30,000, while each player on the losing team will receive $10,000. The Commissioner's Cup MVP will receive an additional $10,000, and the remaining $10,000 will be donated to a charity of the winning team's choosing.
While those are still nice bonuses, the prize money for the Cup is no longer as impactful as it was in previous years. For example, when the Fever won last season, the $30,000 then-rookie forward Makayla Timpson received was nearly half of her $69,267 salary. Even for Kelsey Mitchell, who was making the supermax of $249,244, the $30,000 was a significant bonus worth more than 10% of her contract.
Now, thanks to the pay raises won in the new collective bargaining agreement, Timpson is making $277,500 -- more than Mitchell did last season -- and Mitchell is making $1.4 million.
What is the charitable aspect of the Cup?
Each of the 15 teams has partnered with a local nonprofit organization, and their play in Cup games will earn money for their community partners.
For each Cup game during pool play, the winning team will earn a $3,000 donation for its designated nonprofit organization, while the losing team will earn $1,000 for its selected organization. An additional $10,000 will be awarded to the nonprofit partner of the champion and another $5,000 will be awarded to the nonprofit partner of the runner-up.
Here is each team's partner:
- Atlanta Dream: King Center
- Chicago Sky: Girls in the Game
- Connecticut Sun: United Way
- Dallas Wings: Young Leaders, Strong City
- Golden State Valkyries: Youth Uprising
- Indiana Fever: Coburn Place
- Las Vegas Aces: Public Education Foundation
- Los Angeles Sparks: Brotherhood Crusade
- Minnesota Lynx: Women's Foundation of Minnesota
- New York Liberty: African American Policy Forum
- Phoenix Mercury: Chicanos Por La Causa
- Portland Fire: Black Parent Initiative
- Seattle Storm: King County Library System Foundation
- Toronto Tempo: Lay-Up
- Washington Mystics: Ben's Chili Bowl Foundation
History of the Cup
There have been five different champions in the first five years of the Cup, and seven different teams have reached the championship game. The Las Vegas Aces, New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx have each had a chance to become the first repeat champion, but none have been successful.
Notably, only one championship game has been decided by single digits. That was in 2024, when the Lynx held off a late comeback attempt from the Liberty. Otherwise, the championship has been non-competitive.
YearChampionRunner-upScoreCup MVP2021
Seattle Storm
Connecticut Sun
79-57
2022
Las Vegas Aces
Chicago Sky
93-83
2023
New York Liberty
Las Vegas Aces
82-63
2024
Minnesota Lynx
New York Liberty
94-89
2025
Indiana Fever
Minnesota Lynx
74-59
The 2022 Aces are the only team that has won the Commissioner's Cup and the WNBA Finals in the same season. In both 2023 and 2024, the Finals were a rematch of the Commissioner's Cup championship, though on both occasions the team that lost the Cup won the Finals.
It's also worth noting that the 2021 Storm are the only team to reach the Commissioner's Cup championship that did not go on to make at least the semifinals of that season's playoffs.
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