Nine straight wins carried the Golden State Valkyries to the top of the WNBA standings and into the record book for their own two-year-old franchise. The run ended on July 20, 2026, when the Washington Mystics beat Golden State 90-82 at Chase Center, but not before it became the longest winning streak the Valkyries have produced since entering the league in 2025. That milestone is a good excuse to settle a question fans ask every summer: what is the longest winning streak in WNBA history, and how does anything happening right now actually compare?
The short answer is that Golden State’s streak, however impressive for an expansion-era club, sits well outside the league’s all-time top tier. The full picture requires going back a quarter-century.
How the Valkyries’ streak unfolded
Golden State clinched win number nine on July 18 with a 74-69 victory over the Mystics, a game in which point guard Veronica Burton recorded an 11-point, 11-assist double-double. The team’s own recap confirmed the win extended a franchise-record winning streak to nine games and pushed Golden State to 7-0 all-time against Washington. Two nights later, the Mystics flipped the script, closing the game on a 22-5 run to snap the streak at nine. Golden State’s home crowd at Chase Center has been part of the story all year, part of the same surge in league-wide attendance that has reshaped the WNBA’s business this season. Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase leaned into that atmosphere earlier this season, saying after one Chase Center win, “We’re getting used to our atmosphere, we’re taking in Ballhalla. It was amazing. So thank you, Ballhalla.”
The longest winning streaks in WNBA history
No team has come within two games of the all-time record in more than two decades, and only two runs since have even reached 16. Here is the full picture of the longest streaks in a single WNBA season, regular season games only:
- 2001 Los Angeles Sparks, 18 games. Still the record. Lisa Leslie’s Sparks won a league-best 28 of 32 games, including a midseason stretch after a three-game skid against Houston, Cleveland and New York in which they simply stopped losing. The run carried into a championship over the Charlotte Sting.
- 2014 Phoenix Mercury, 16 games. Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner’s Mercury ran off 16 straight on their way to a 29-5 season and a title.
- 2025 Las Vegas Aces, 16 games. The most recent entry to reach the top tier. Las Vegas was 14-14 in early August 2025 before closing the regular season on 16 consecutive wins, a streak that continued into a playoff-opening win before Seattle stopped it at 17 total games. The Aces’ own recap of the streak-clinching win over the Sparks put the number at 16 regular-season games, tying Phoenix for second all time.
- 1998 Houston Comets, 15 games. Part of a Comets dynasty that won the league’s first four championships.
- 2021 Connecticut Sun, 14 games. The most recent streak to crack the top five before the Aces’ 2025 run.
- 2016 Minnesota Lynx, 13 games.
- 2011-12 Minnesota Lynx, 13 games, spanning the end of one season and start of the next.
- 2010 Seattle Storm, 13 games.
- 2024 Las Vegas Aces, 13 games. A franchise record at the time, later broken by their own 16-game run in 2025.
Most clubs on that list reached the WNBA Finals that year, except the 2021 Sun and 2024 Aces, both stopped in the semifinals, and five of the nine streaks belong to teams crowned champions that same year. Golden State’s nine-game run this month would rank outside this group entirely, tied instead with the postseason mark: the 2001-02 Sparks and 2013-14 Minnesota Lynx both won nine consecutive playoff games, still the longest postseason streaks in league history.
Why the gap at the top is so wide
A modern WNBA season runs 40 to 44 games, so an 18-game streak like the Sparks’ still represents roughly four in every ten games on the schedule won consecutively. Back-to-backs, international breaks and a deeper, more competitive league than existed in 2001 have also worked against long streaks. That context helps explain why the Aces’ 2025 streak, built by a veteran core anchored by three-time MVP A’ja Wilson, still fell two games short of Los Angeles’ mark from a very different era of the league.
It also puts Golden State’s achievement into fairer perspective. An expansion franchise still finding its rotation reached nine straight wins in its second season, matching the all-time postseason record for consecutive wins by any team, even if the regular-season leaderboard remains untouched. The Valkyries will get another shot to build a longer run when the schedule resumes after the All-Star break, an event that already features several of the league’s rising names on this year’s rosters.
The Aces proved as much in 2025 when they nearly caught the Sparks after 24 years. Whether Golden State, Las Vegas or another club eventually takes down the 2001 mark, the number to beat remains 18, a mark now in its third decade.
