The first round of the 2026 WNBA playoffs starts on Sunday, September 27, three days after a regular season that ended on Thursday, September 24.
The bracket that came out of that final night has the Minnesota Lynx on top at 33-11 and the Golden State Valkyries second at 32-12 — a franchise in its second year of existence, seeded above the Las Vegas Aces, the Atlanta Dream and every other team in the league but one.
The first-round bracket
| Seed | Team | Record | Opponent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minnesota Lynx | 33-11 | No. 8 New York Liberty (26-18) |
| 2 | Golden State Valkyries | 32-12 | No. 7 Dallas Wings (27-17) |
| 3 | Las Vegas Aces | 31-13 | No. 6 Indiana Fever (28-16) |
| 4 | Atlanta Dream | 30-14 | No. 5 Washington Mystics (28-16) |
The first round is a best-of-three. The semifinals are a best-of-five, and the Finals a best-of-seven — the second year the championship round has been played at that length.
One point decided the seed
Golden State went into its last game needing a win to hold second place. It got one, 76-75 over the Los Angeles Sparks on September 24, and it got there the hard way: by the team's own account the Valkyries came back from 16 points down, the largest comeback in franchise history, and were still trailing by 12 with under four minutes on the clock before closing the game on a 17-1 run.
Kaitlyn Chen scored 18 points, all of them after halftime and 14 in the fourth quarter, on 8-of-12 shooting. Veronica Burton added 17 points and five assists and made all six of her free throws. Gabby Williams hit the shot that put Golden State ahead, a three-pointer with 20 seconds left. Kiah Stokes pulled down a season-high 12 rebounds.
"I thought we did a great job of just sticking with it, and we knew we weren't gonna win it [with] one miraculous play," Chen said in the team's game recap.
A second season better than the first
The Valkyries are the first WNBA expansion team to reach the postseason in each of its first two seasons, according to The San Francisco Standard. Last year they made the playoffs too, but slid from the No. 6 seed to the No. 8 over the closing weeks — the failure that head coach Natalie Nakase, the reigning Coach of the Year and now in her second season with the club, has pointed to as the thing this roster corrected.
Golden State also swept all three of its regular-season meetings with Dallas, which is the awkward statistic for the Wings to carry into a best-of-three. Dallas improved on its 2025 win total by 17 games this year, the largest jump of any playoff team in the field.
Game 1 is Sunday at 9 p.m. ET at Chase Center in San Francisco, on USA Network.
Reporting from the WNBA, the Golden State Valkyries, NBC Sports, The San Francisco Standard and Just Women's Sports.
