The WNBA is headed to the Metropolis of Roses.
Portland was awarded the WNBA’s fifteenth franchise, the league introduced Wednesday. The franchise, which is able to start play in 2026, is led by Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal, the house owners of the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League’s Portland Thorns.
The workforce will play within the metropolis’s downtown enviornment, the Moda Heart, which can be dwelling to the NBA’s Portland Path Blazers.
“We imagine within the transformative energy of ladies’s sports activities and are thrilled that the W will name Portland dwelling,” Lisa Bhathal Merage said in a statement. “We all know that Portland’s vibrant and various communities will extremely assist and rally round this workforce. Our purpose is to develop this group in partnership with the Portland neighborhood and we look ahead to supporting the very best ladies’s basketball gamers on this planet once they take the ground on the Moda Heart in 2026.”