The WNBA section has three pages: a schedule that walks through the regular season month by month, a simulator that turns results into conference standings, and a playoff page that follows the bracket series by series. The league's format explains why the simulator comes with one caveat, covered below.
Forty-four games in five months
In 2026 the league had 15 teams, after the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo joined, and each played 44 games, 22 at home and 22 away, between May 8 and September 24: 330 games in all. The league has announced a 50-game regular season from 2027. The WNBA schedule has one page per month, May to September, split into game nights. A row gives the two teams, the arena and a start time in US Eastern, replaced by Final and the score once the game is over. On the main page a box at the top counts games played and left to play and shows the share of the season done.
One wrinkle is the in-season Commissioner's Cup. Its games count in the regular-season record, so they appear in the schedule and the standings, but the Cup championship game does not count and the page leaves it out. That is why the total is exactly 330, which is 15 teams times 44 games divided by two.
How eight teams reach the playoffs
The league seeds the eight best regular-season records from 1 to 8 no matter which conference the teams play in. The first round is best-of-three, pairing 1 with 8, 2 with 7, 3 with 6 and 4 with 5, and the higher seed hosts Games 1 and 3. The semifinals are best-of-five and the WNBA Finals best-of-seven. The bracket is not reseeded: the winner of 1 against 8 meets the winner of 4 against 5, and 2 against 7 leads to 3 against 6. Our playoff format guide shows what each seed has been worth.
The playoff page draws that bracket with one column per round and one card per series. Each card shows both seeds, the wins so far and either who advanced or when the next game is. Under the bracket is the playoff schedule, game by game, in the same rows as the regular season, and a game that is played only if a series goes long is marked If necessary.
From results to conference tables
The WNBA simulator starts from the real results. Pick a month, then a game night labelled by its day of the month, and type a score for any game still to be played; finished games show their real score and cannot be edited. Two tables, Eastern and Western, re-sort as you type, showing wins, losses and winning percentage and ordered by winning percentage, then wins, then point differential.
- Simulate season fills every open game with the model and replaces whatever you typed.
- Simulate night fills only the night on screen.
- Clear removes every score you or the model entered and brings back the real standings.
- Once the regular season is complete there is nothing left to predict, so the page shows the final tables and lets you step back through the nights behind them. Nothing is stored either way: reload and the real results return.
When the model fills a game it draws a margin and a total score. Each team is rated on its average scoring margin in 2026, the gap between two ratings sets the expected margin, and home court adds about two points, 1.94 over the first 269 games of the season. A game totals roughly 174 points between the two teams, and the spread of real results decides how often the weaker team wins, so upsets happen at a realistic rate. WNBA scoring by season shows how 2026 set a scoring record.
The playoff line a conference table cannot show
Because the league seeds the eight best records overall, a table split by conference can only approximate who qualifies. In 2026 the East had seven teams and the West eight. During a season the simulator marks the top four in each conference as Playoffs, which is exact when four teams from each side make the field and wrong when one conference sends five, so in a close race compare the records in both tables before trusting the marker. With the 2026 season over, it marks the eight teams that played the playoffs.
The usual caveats apply too. A rating summarizes how good a team has been, not how it is playing now, and no model here knows about injuries, trades or rest days. One run is one possible season, so simulate a few times before reading anything into a single table. The methodology page lists every constant.
Keep reading
- WNBA expansion teams' first seasons ranks every new team's debut, including the two that joined in 2026.
- WNBA MVP winners and how often the MVP wins the title follows the award through the playoffs.
Free, with no account. Nothing you enter is stored, so reloading the page puts the season back to what really happened.