The WNBA All-Star Game 2026 tips off Saturday, July 25 at United Center in Chicago, capping a three-day showcase built around the league’s 30th season. Kickoff is set for 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC, with a special edition of WNBA Countdown leading in at 8 p.m. and a postgame show following at 10:30. Anyone hunting for the exact dates, the rosters or how the voting actually worked can find the full rundown below, ahead of the weekend rather than after it.
Friday night belongs to the undercard. The Kia WNBA Shooting Stars event and the State Farm WNBA 3-Point Contest both happen at Wintrust Arena, home of the Chicago Sky, starting at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN and Disney+. WNBA Live presented by AWS runs Thursday evening through Saturday at McCormick Place for fans who want autograph lines and interactive games away from the arena floor.
Selecting the roster is a math problem before it becomes a popularity contest. Fans supplied half the weight in choosing the ten starters, with current players and a media panel each contributing a quarter. Every voter ranked players by position, guards separate from frontcourt, and each player’s final score came from averaging their weighted rank across all three groups; fan voting broke any ties. That formula, run across the 17-day voting window from June 11 to June 27, produced four guards and six frontcourt starters. The league’s 15 head coaches then filled out the 12 reserve spots, barred from voting for anyone on their own roster.
The twist for 2026 is who actually builds the teams. WNBA legends Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon serve as honorary general managers, drafting from the full 22-player pool live on ESPN. A coin flip decided which of them would inherit the leading fan vote-getter, and Cooper won it, landing Dallas guard Paige Bueckers for “Team Coop.” Weatherspoon took the runner-up, Indiana’s Caitlin Clark, for “Team Spoon.” Weatherspoon picked first among the starters and chose Las Vegas center A’ja Wilson; Cooper answered by taking New York’s Breanna Stewart. Team Coop wears red, Team Spoon wears blue, a callback to the league’s original 1997 color scheme.
Running the fan-vote numbers shows just how tight the top of the ballot was. Bueckers led all players with 1,045,051 votes, and Clark finished second with 1,023,321. That’s a gap of only 21,730 votes, about 2.08 percent, which means Clark pulled in roughly 97.9 percent of Bueckers’ total even though the two now play for opposing rosters. Elsewhere in the starting lineup, Wilson and Stewart each picked up their eighth career All-Star selection, tying them for the most among this year’s ten starters.
Coaching duties went to Becky Hammon of Las Vegas and Cheryl Reeve of Minnesota, the two teams with the best records through games on July 10. Vegas and Minnesota were tied at 16-6, and Hammon claimed the tiebreaker by beating the Lynx in their lone head-to-head meeting; she takes the sideline for Team Coop while Reeve leads Team Spoon. Minnesota’s run to that league-best mark is its own story this season. Readers curious how it stacks up historically can dig into Playbook Wire’s ranking of the longest winning streaks in WNBA history.
Friday’s three-point field features four-time All-Star Rhyne Howard, first-time All-Star Marina Mabrey and No. 1 draft pick Azzi Fudd, joined by first-time contest entrants Bridget Carleton, Natisha Hiedeman and Janelle SalaΓΌn. State Farm is the new title sponsor, adding “From the Logo” shots worth three points each, with every make triggering a donation to Girls Who Code. The Shooting Stars field leans on Hall of Fame names, including Elena Delle Donne and Lauren Jackson alongside five-time champion Rebekkah Brunson.
There’s money on the line beyond bragging rights, too. As part of the 30th-season celebration, the two All-Star teams are playing for a $100,000 prize pool benefiting Chicago-based girls’ sports organizations, with $70,000 going to the winning side’s charity and $30,000 to the runner-up’s. Team Coop is playing for Angels Athletics; Team Spoon is playing for Girls in the Game.
None of this has actually happened yet, so treat every matchup here as the plan rather than the result. For more on how fans are showing up around the league this season, browse Playbook Wire’s Fan Culture coverage as All-Star weekend gets closer.
