Head Coach of Portland Fire Alex Sarama, left, and General Manager of the team Vanja Černivec attend a press conference at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. The WNBA team is set to return to Portland in 2026.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
The Portland Fire finally get to start building their roster on Friday when the WNBA holds an expansion draft for the league’s two new teams.
Whatever players the team selects will likely enjoy Oregon’s traditionally strong fanbase for women athletes — the incoming team has already sold more than 15,000 season tickets. The Portland Fire are scheduled to tip off on May 9 at the Moda Center.
Typically, the team would have started adding players to its roster five to six months ahead of the season, starting with an expansion draft. However, contentious labor negotiations pushed back the process for the 2026 season, condensing the Fire’s team-building timeline to about five weeks.
As the process gets started, here are some things to know about Friday’s expansion draft:
What is an expansion draft?
Professional sports leagues run expansion drafts when they add new teams. It’s a way for inaugural teams to get experienced players on their rosters. In the process, incoming franchises are allowed to select a limited number of players from existing teams to help build their initial roster of players.
Driven by record-breaking viewership, attendance and investment, the WNBA is partway through the process of expanding from 12 teams in 2024 to 18 teams by the end of the decade. The league just ran an expansion draft for the Golden State Valkyries, who joined as the 13th team a year ago.
The expansion draft ahead of the 2026 season will include two teams, the Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo. The teams will take turns choosing current WNBA players, and at the end of the process could potentially end up with a full roster of 12 players.
Is it on TV? Is there a watch party?
The expansion draft will air on Friday at 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time on ESPN.
The Portland Fire are not hosting a public watch party for the expansion draft. However, Friday evening officials from the Fire are partnering with Backwoods Brewing for a NCAA Women’s Final Four watch party. There also will be a party at the Moda Center on April 13 for the WNBA rookie draft.
One of the newly unveiled logos for the Portland Fire at the team’s launch party, Portland, Ore., July 15, 2025.
Anna Lueck for OPB / OPB
How will the expansion draft work?
The expansion draft has two rounds and each team has six picks per round. The Portland Fire will have the first pick in the first round, and the Toronto Tempo get the first pick in the second round.
The teams will be able to pick from a designated pool of available players, according to the WNBA. Existing teams can only have one player chosen in each round, meaning that at the end of the two-round process, existing teams would lose no more than two players.
The WNBA currently has just over 150 players. Which ones can Portland and Toronto choose?
Some players will be off-limits to the new teams.
On Sunday, the current 13 teams submitted a list of five players they were protecting from the expansion draft. The WNBA is not making those lists public, but officials from Portland and Toronto will know which players have been protected by each team.
That leaves about seven unprotected players per team that Portland and Toronto can theoretically choose, but there are complicated rules for how those players are chosen.
Once a player from a team is chosen in the first round, no other player from that team can be drafted. For example, if Portland drafts a player from the Seattle Storm with their number one pick in the first round, neither Portland nor Toronto can pick a Storm player for the remainder of the first round. That limitation ends at the start of the second round, when unprotected players are again available from each team.
Another limitation: The Fire and Tempo are only allowed to draft one unrestricted free agent each, a designation that describes more than 70 players.
What about players with Oregon connections? Any chance we’ll see one of them on the Fire?
Fan favorites Sabrina Ionescu and Satou Sabally, who both played college basketball at the University of Oregon, are unrestricted free agents. It is highly likely Ionesco and Sabally will be protected by their respective teams, the New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury. But if not, Portland would only be able to draft one of the former Ducks.
Sabrina Ionescu celebrates after making a shot during the Oregon Ducks' Elite Eight win over Mississippi State at the Moda Center on Sunday, March 31, 2019.
Kaylee Domzalski / OPB
This is complicated. Anything other important details?
Yes. Just to make things even more complicated, both Portland and Toronto cut a deal with the Chicago Sky. The incoming franchises won’t draft any players from the Sky and in exchange will get better picks in the upcoming rookie draft.
Didn’t the WNBA and the players just sign a new contract? How does that affect the expansion draft?
The league and players have signed a historic agreement that will yield the first $1 million-plus earner in the WNBA. It will also set up a revenue-sharing agreement that will share a portion of total revenue with the players.
Portland and Toronto officials have likely been studying up on the new contract since the details were finalized last month.
From left, Chief Green, age 7, and Earl McCarthy, age 10, shoot basketballs at the launch party for the Fire, Portland’s new WNBA team, at the Moda Center in Portland, Ore., July 15, 2025.
Anna Lueck for OPB / OPB
It was a hard-fought deal that threatened to delay the start of the season and pushed back the expansion draft by months. It also changed some details of how the expansion draft works — namely, how many players a team can protect, The changes mean the Fire and Tempo have a few more options available than if they joined the league under the old collective bargaining agreement.
Will players picked in the expansion draft be on the team on opening night, May 9?
Unknown. While May 9 is only a handful of weeks away, the teams have a whole lot of business to conduct before then.
After the expansion draft is a period of free agency. That’s when teams trade with each other for players or future rookie draft picks. And the Portland Fire, Toronto Tempo, and all the other teams in the WNBA will have the opportunity to pick more players during the rookie draft on April 13.
After all of that, a roster of players go to training camp in late April. The Portland Fire will make cuts at training camps, and will likely continue to make changes — even through the first part of the season.
It’s possible the Portland Fire could walk away from the expansion draft with a solid veteran player or two that team leaders will build a roster around. Or they could end up with a list of players brimming with potential to either train up or trade away.
