The Toronto Tempo are one step closer to building their inaugural roster.
The Tempo won a coin flip on Friday with the Portland Fire — the other WNBA franchise joining this year — and were given the choice of taking the earlier entry draft pick or the first pick in the expansion draft. Toronto chose to select sixth in the entry draft, as a result the Fire will make the first expansion draft selection.
WNBA Draft 2026 picks 1-5 were already determined last fall at through a lottery system. The Tempo and Fire were designated to select at sixth and seventh, but now that order has been made official. The Dallas Wings will select first for a second year in a row.
The Tempo and Fire will alternate picks through the other two rounds of the draft, with the Tempo having the seventh pick in the second round and the sixth pick again in the third round. The draft will be held on April 13 at 7:00 p.m. ET.
The expansion draft on April 3 at 3:30 p.m. ET will consist of two rounds with six picks in each round. It will be a snake-style draft, meaning the Fire will pick first and then alternate with the Tempo until pick 12, at which point the Tempo will have two selections in a row as they will also make the 13th pick.
Each WNBA team will release a full roster list on Sunday that outlines the five players they have chosen to protect and the status of each of the players they have the rights to.
Any player who has five or more years of service after the 2025 season must be put on the roster list as an unrestricted free agent or included on the unprotected list. Only two veteran players — Lexie Brown and Kalani Brown — had contracts that didn’t expire last season.
The Tempo and Fire will make their picks from the group of unprotected players.
Toronto and Portland each may only select one player who’s a potential unrestricted free agent. The Tempo and Fire would then be allowed to negotiate a supermax contract with those players, which could be worth up to $1.4 million annually under the new CBA. No team may lose more than two players total through the expansion draft.
It’s the second consecutive year that the league has held an expansion draft. Golden State entered the league last year and became the first expansion team to make the playoffs.
— with files from the Associated Press