The WNBA has floated a March 10 deadline for the framework of a new collective bargaining agreement to avoid an impact to the 2026 season, a source confirmed to Yahoo Sports’ Cassandra Negley Monday.
Per Negley, the league “suggested March 10 as a date after which the season schedule could start being impacted” in a virtual meeting that included league officials and more than 50 players.
ESPN’s Alexa Philippou first reported the league’s proposed deadline Monday afternoon.
That news arrives amid high-stakes and frequently publicly contentious negotiations between the WNBA and the WNBPA over a new CBA that will shape the future of the league when and if the two sides reach an agreement.
Amid explosive growth in women’s basketball and league revenue, the players association is demanding historic changes from the previous CBA that capped the league’s supermax salary at roughly $249,000 with a minimum salary of $66,000 in 2025. The WNBPA opted out of that CBA in 2024, and it expired at the conclusion of last season.
The two sides have reopened talks in recent days following a weeks-long stalemate and multiple extensions to a deadline to reach a new CBA. The 2026 WNBA season is scheduled to tip off on May 8. Per Monday’s news, that start date is at risk if the two sides don’t agree to a new CBA in two weeks.
Where negotiations stand
In the latest round of publicly reported negotiations, the WNBA offered a counterproposal that addressed player demands for housing and agreed to offer team housing for all players through the 2026 season. That was on Saturday.
Days earlier, the WNBPA reportedly offered a proposal with concessions to its revenue-sharing demands, reducing its asks from an average of 31% of gross revenue to 27.5% over the course of the agreement. The union reduced its demand of a 10.5% salary cap to less than $9.5 million. The salary cap in 2025 was roughly $1.5 million.
The league scoffed at that proposal, calling it “unrealistic” and declaring in a statement that it would “cause hundreds of millions of dollars of losses for our teams.”
Per ESPN, the league has proposed instead that players receive 70% of net revenue — which adds up to less than 15% of gross revenue — while proposing a $5.65 million salary cap.
Under that proposal, the supermax salary would increase from $249,000 to $1.3 million in 2026 and would project to nearly $2 million by 2031. The average player salary would increase from $120,000 to $540,000 in 2026 with a projection of $780,000 by 2031, according to ESPN.
Those proposals remained largely unchanged in the league’s latest counter, per ESPN, and the two sides appear to remain far apart on those fundamental issues. The union’s executive committee previously authorized players to strike.
Despite the apparent gap, WNBPA vice president and All-WNBA Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier sees room for optimism. She offered hope last Wednesday that “I think negotiations are trending in the right direction.”
“You want movement,” Collier said on Yahoo Sports’ Hoops 360 podcast. “You don’t want to be in a stalemate. You want there to be hope for the future, and I do have that. I think there has to be a lot of movement in a lot of places in the CBA, but the fact that we are moving, I think, is really hopeful.”