It’s June in the WNBA, which means Commissioner’s Cup season. The league’s in-season tournament returns for its sixth season with 49 games scheduled between June 1-17, culminating in the championship game on June 30.
While the format remains largely unchanged, a new collective bargaining agreement and league expansion have created a couple of notable wrinkles for 2026.
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While the term “Commissioner’s Cup” wasn’t in the fine print of the 2020 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), it is now included in the 2026 CBA, which is available for all to read, 409 pages in all, on the players association’s website. (Don’t worry, our analysis of it is coming!)
The older document specified that in the first year of the cup that the player prize pool would begin at a minimum of $500,000 and could reach a maximum of $750,000.
The 2026 CBA reveals that the Commissioner’s Cup MVP bonus has doubled from the previous $5,000 to $10,000. The new CBA also specifies that beginning in 2027, Commissioner’s Cup bonuses will rise or fall in conjunction with the salary cap. In other words, the tournament’s financial reward structure will now grow alongside league revenue.
What is the purpose of the Commissioner’s Cup in 2026?
When it was first established, the $30,000 given to each player of the winning team and the $10,000 given to each player of the losing team represented a significant chunk of money being added onto what for some players was a more modest five figure salary. Let’s take last year’s Cup finalists the Indiana Fever and the Minnesota Lynx as an example.
Makayla Timpson, the Fever’s 2025 19th overall pick, made a base salary of $69,267. The Cup payout represented more than 43 percent of her annual salary. Anastasiia Olairi Kosu, another rookie but on the Lynx, earned over 14 percent of her yearly salary via the Cup money that the Lynx earned by making the championship game.
”I think the money has been more top of mind for them than anything else,” Fever head coach Stephanie White admitted last year leading up to the Cup championship game.
But with average WNBA salaries increasing by around 400 percent in the new CBA, will Commissioner’s Cup prize money still carry the same significance? When Jonquel Jones, the Liberty’s center who has played in three of the five Cups, was asked about that, she still believed the money to still be significant.
“$30,000 is $30,000,” she said with a laugh.
Her teammate Breanna Stewart agreed, noting that $30,000 isn’t “chump change.”
But for both players, what is motivating them most to play hard throughout the month of June is the philanthropic portion of the Cup. Ever since the 2022 season, each WNBA team has chosen a charitable organization to play for.
Each time a team wins a Cup game, $3,000 is donated to the team’s chosen charity. Losing teams still donate $1,000 from each game played. For the two finalists of the Cup championship, the winner donates $10,000 to their organization and the loser donates $5,000.
“The charity component is probably, probably the most important part,” Stewart said. “For us, a team that’s kind of been in the mix for a few times, like making sure that we’re able to have money go to our charity.”
Previous years have included themes with 2023 spotlighting organizations that help communities access health care. Last season the charities were chosen under the theme of fostering inclusivity and freedom. Multiple teams chose to donate to their local ACLU branches.
This year’s charitable partnerships are less unified around a single theme and more reflective of each franchise’s history and community, especially with the league celebrating its 30th season.
For instance, the Sparks have been partners with their charity Brotherhood Crusade ever since the league’s first season. And the Liberty have decided to partner with the African American Policy Forum, the organization that played a role during the league’s bubble season that was dedicated to the #SayHerName campaign.
Impact of Expansion on WNBA Commissioner’s Cup
Another difference between 2026 and previous iterations of the Cup is the introduction of two new expansion teams in the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo. For the second year in a row beginning with the Valkyries last season, the conferences aren’t balanced. This season there are eight teams in the Western Conference and seven in the East.
The Eastern Conference teams (Dream, Liberty, Tempo, Mystics, Fever, Sky and Sun) all only play six Cup games while the Western Conference teams (Lynx, Wings, Aces, Valkyries, Fire, Sparks, Storm and Mercury) play seven Cup games. It’s a practical limitation created by expansion in two straight years, and it remains to be seen whether the disparity will continue to have any meaningful impact.
Are the results of the Commissioner’s Cup predictive of who makes the WNBA Finals?
In short, no it does not. The fact that the Las Vegas Aces were the only team to win both a Cup championship and a WNBA title in the same year points to the fact that 1) it’s incredibly difficult to win both in the same season and 2) the parity in the WNBA isn’t what it is now. (Parity, a topic to explore in a future column.)
Then if you look at 2023 and 2024, those years were accurate indicators of which teams were consistently the best performing teams. Those years in particular resulted in a rematch during the WNBA Finals months later in October with the winner being the team opposite of the one who won the Cup months prior.
The Cup can also serve as a benchmark for how teams can really flip the switch and go on runs that serve as tales that stand the test of time. The two bookend years of the Cup so far in 2021 and 2025 both didn’t feature any of the Cup finalists in the WNBA Finals. The 2021 Chicago Sky went from ending the regular season at .500 to winning the franchise’s first title. The 2025 Las Vegas Aces famously lost 111-58 to the Cup runner-up in the Lynx before winning 17 straight games to march all the way to the Finals and then sweep the Mercury in four games.
While the Cup doesn’t always serve as a crystal ball, it for sure serves as a marker that plays a role in shaping storylines, which was the point of the Cup in the first place.
