Report: Toronto awarded WNBA expansion team, will begin play in 2026
Report: Toronto awarded WNBA expansion team, will begin play in 2026
Canada will be home to the league's 14th team.
The WNBA will be expanding into Toronto for the 2026 season, according to a report from CBC Sports’ Shireen Ahmed on Friday morning.
Ahmed reported that Kilmer Sports Inc., which is led by Toronto billionaire Larry Tanenbaum, has been granted an expansion franchise in the league. It will be the league’s 14th franchise, and first in Canada after years of people calling for the league to head north of the border.
Kilmer Sports Inc. is no stranger to Toronto sports, with the company owning 25 per cent of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) and Tanenbaum currently the MLSE chairman. MLSE owns several teams across several sports — the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Marlies, Toronto Raptors, Raptors 905, Toronto Argonauts, Toronto FC, and Toronto FC II. They also own Scotiabank Arena, home of the Leafs and Raptors.
According to the CBC report, Tanenbaum wanted MLSE to start the WNBA team, but it was turned down by other members of the board, so he embarked on the journey with his holding company Kilmer Sports Inc.
Toronto joining in 2026 will follow the WNBA’s expansion into San Francisco, California, which will happen for the 2025 season.
According to Ahmed’s report, the new team would play at Coca-Cola Coliseum, an 8,000-seat arena that currently hosts the Toronto Marlies, and at the moment is where Toronto’s Professional Women's Hockey League team is playing its inaugural playoff series.
There has also been speculation in recent weeks that the PWHL team could also make the move to Coca-Cola Coliseum full-time, as it has seemingly already outgrown its home at the Mattamy Athletic Centre in the league’s first season.
Last May, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena hosted a WNBA preseason game between the Minnesota Lynx and Chicago Sky — the first game in league history on Canadian soil. The arena was sold out for that game and merchandise sold out almost instantly, confirming that there is in fact a lot of interest in the city for a professional women’s basketball team.
The event was seen as a huge success, and this year the WNBA is hosting another preseason game in Canada, this time at Edmonton’s Rogers Place, where more than 16,000 tickets have already been sold.
An official announcement that the team is joining the WNBA is expected to come on May 23 in Toronto according to the CBC report, with the team’s first game in May 2026.
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