Are WNBA salaries paid across the year or only during the season?

Players choose. Under the WNBA's standard player contract, base salary is paid in instalments across the regular season, but players may elect to have it spread over twelve months instead. The choice matters more now that base pay has risen: a player on the $270,000 minimum taking twelve-month distribution receives roughly $22,500 a month rather than a compressed summer payout.

Do WNBA players pay for their own flights and accommodation?

No. The league moved to full-time charter flights for the 2024 season, and teams cover in-season travel and hotels. Players are responsible for their own housing outside the team-provided apartment arrangements written into the CBA, and the 2026 agreement raised the housing standards teams must meet.

What happens to a player's salary if she is cut or traded?

A waived player's remaining base salary is guaranteed only if her contract was fully guaranteed at the point the roster deadline passed; training-camp contracts are generally not. In a trade, the receiving team assumes the full remaining cap number, which is why the 2026 CBA bars supermax players from being moved in a sign-and-trade.

How does the WNBA rookie scale compare with the NBA's?

The 2026 WNBA number one pick earns $500,000 on the rookie scale. The NBA's number one pick under the 2026-27 scale earns several times that. The structural difference is that the WNBA scale compresses fast: by the last seven picks of round one the figure is $289,133, barely above the $270,000 rookie minimum.

Is there a WNBA equivalent of the NBA's max contract exception for veterans?

Partly. The 2026 CBA introduced EPIC, or Exceptional Performance on Initial Contract, which lets a player renegotiate the fourth year of her rookie deal into a three-year extension. All-WNBA first or second team selection unlocks a max; an MVP unlocks a supermax. It functions as the WNBA's version of a designated-player rule, but it is tied to the rookie contract rather than to service time.

Do WNBA players get playoff money on top of salary?

Yes, through a separate postseason pool, and award bonuses were sharply increased in the new deal. The MVP award payment rose to $60,000 for 2026 from $15,450 in 2025. These bonuses sit outside the salary cap and outside the base salary figures quoted in contract reporting.

WNBA Salaries Explained: The 2026 CBA, Supermax and Pay Gap

A WNBA player on the 2026 supermax earns $1.4 million in base salary. The regular max is $1.19 million, the league minimum runs from $270,000 to $300,000 depending on service time, and the team salary cap is $7 million. Every one of those numbers is roughly four to five times what the equivalent figure was in 2025, because the league and the players’ union signed a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement in March 2026 that tied salaries to league revenue for the first time.

That last clause is the whole story. Everything below explains what changed, what a WNBA player actually banks across a full year, and why the comparison with NBA pay is more complicated than a percentage.

What the 2026 CBA pays

The WNBPA opted out of the previous agreement in October 2024, letting it expire on 31 October 2025. Negotiations ran past the deadline and into the following spring before a term sheet was signed in March 2026, ratified unanimously by the players and then by the board of governors.

Figure	2025	2026
Team salary cap	~$1.5m	$7m
Supermax base salary	$249,244	$1.4m (20% of cap)
Regular max base salary	—	$1.19m (17% of cap)
Average salary	~$120,000	~$583,800
Minimum, 0 years	$66,079	$270,000
Minimum, 10+ years	$66,079	$300,000
No. 1 draft pick	not separately published	$500,000
MVP award payment	$15,450	$60,000

Figures per ESPN’s breakdown of the 2026 CBA salary structure, published March 2026. All are base salary or award payments, not total earnings.

Two details in that table do more work than the headline supermax. The first is the minimum: at $270,000, a rookie who never starts a game now out-earns the 2025 supermax. The second is how fast the rookie scale falls away. The number one pick gets $500,000, the number three pick $436,016, and the last seven picks of the first round $289,133 — barely above the floor. The scale rewards being drafted at the very top and treats the rest of round one as close to replacement level.

The cap is scheduled to keep climbing, and ESPN reported it is projected to exceed $10 million by the end of the seven-year term.

Why WNBA pay is a fraction of NBA pay

The percentage answer gets quoted most often: WNBA players were receiving a reported 9.3 per cent of league revenue under the old deal, against roughly half in the NBA. The new agreement moves the WNBA share to about 20 per cent on average across the term, per ESPN’s Shams Charania. The union had opened at 30 per cent; the league had opened at 15.

But the percentage is not where most of the gap lives. Run the arithmetic and it becomes obvious.

Fifteen teams at a $7 million cap is $105 million of leaguewide cap space in 2026. The WNBA’s new media agreements were reported in May 2026 at $3.1 billion over ten years, or roughly $281 million a year, on top of gate, sponsorship and merchandise. The NBA’s projected revenue for 2025-26 was about $14.3 billion against a WNBA revenue base reported at around $300 million for 2025.

Now suppose the WNBA paid the NBA’s share tomorrow — half of revenue rather than a fifth. The cap would land somewhere near $17 million to $18 million a team, and the supermax near $3.5 million. That is a large raise. It is not NBA money, and it never could be at this revenue base, because 50 per cent of $300 million is still $150 million. The share is the negotiable part; the size of the pie is the binding constraint.

Two things follow that most coverage skips. Small leagues carry fixed costs — arenas, coaching staff, travel, medical, front offices — that do not shrink in proportion to revenue, which is the league’s standing argument against a straight NBA-style split. And the revenue base is the fastest-moving number in the sport, which is why the union fought for a share rather than a fixed figure.

What a WNBA player actually earns in a year

Base salary is one of four income streams, and for most of the roster it has never been the largest.

League salary. The 44-game 2026 season runs from May into the autumn. That is the base figure above.

The offseason league. Unrivaled, the three-on-three offseason competition that launched in 2025, paid a reported average of about $220,000 in its first season, and expanded to eight teams and 42 players for 2026 with salaries increasing again. Players also split a 15 per cent league equity pool, which is compensation the WNBA cannot match in kind. For a player on the WNBA minimum, an Unrivaled contract has been close to a second full salary.

Overseas. This used to be the big one and no longer is. Russia paid over $1 million to a handful of WNBA stars before 2022; that market closed after Brittney Griner’s detention and the invasion of Ukraine. Turkey has been the main remaining destination, with reported contracts in the $300,000 to $400,000 range for marquee names. ESPN reported in 2026 that the traffic has begun to reverse, with higher WNBA salaries pulling European players toward the US rather than pushing Americans abroad.

Endorsements. The widest spread of the four. Caitlin Clark’s Nike agreement was reported across multiple outlets in 2024 at eight years and $28 million, the largest signed by a women’s basketball player. Most of the league has nothing comparable, and for the bulk of the roster endorsement income is four or low five figures.

The practical consequence: the 2026 CBA changed the floor far more than it changed the ceiling. A fringe roster player went from a salary that made the offseason job compulsory to one that does not. A star’s total income moved much less, because her base was never the main number.

If you want the men’s side of the same structure, our explainer on the richest NBA players and how their fortunes are built shows how far outside income can outrun a contract.

What is still unsettled

Three things worth watching, none of which the CBA resolved outright.

Roster size did not expand in step with the cap, so a $7 million cap divided across a squad of eleven or twelve creates real middle-class compression: after one supermax and one max, about $4.4 million remains for nine or ten players. Expect more minimum contracts than the average salary figure implies.

The schedule grows before the money does. Games rise to as many as 50 in 2027 and 52 from 2029, which raises the workload attached to each contract year.

And prioritisation — the rule pushing players to report to WNBA camp ahead of overseas commitments — matters less each year as overseas markets shrink and Unrivaled fills the calendar domestically instead.

The number to carry around

For 2026, use $270,000 as the floor, roughly $584,000 as the average, and $1.4 million as the ceiling for base salary, with the caveat that base salary is the smallest of the four income streams for the league’s biggest names and the largest for everyone else. Re-check these when the cap is set for 2027, since the cap now moves with revenue rather than sitting at a fixed number.