The WNBA is headed to the Metropolis of Roses.
Portland was awarded the WNBA’s fifteenth franchise, the league introduced Wednesday. The franchise, which is able to start play in 2026, is led by Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal, the homeowners of the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League’s Portland Thorns.
The staff will play within the metropolis’s downtown area, the Moda Middle, which can be dwelling to the NBA’s Portland Path Blazers.
“We imagine within the transformative energy of girls’s sports activities and are thrilled that the W will name Portland dwelling,” Lisa Bhathal Merage said in a statement. “We all know that Portland’s vibrant and various communities will extremely assist and rally round this staff. Our purpose is to develop this group in partnership with the Portland neighborhood and we stay up for supporting the very best ladies’s basketball gamers on the planet once they take the ground on the Moda Middle in 2026.”
