WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert to Retire After the 2026 Season

Engelbert announced today she'll step down at year's end, closing a tenure that oversaw real business growth for the league alongside real, well-documented friction with players.

Cathy Engelbert, the WNBA's first-ever commissioner, announced today that she will retire at the end of the 2026 season. Engelbert, 61, was named to the role in May 2019 and has held it through a period of real, substantial growth for the league.

Under her tenure, the WNBA added expansion franchises in San Francisco, Portland, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia, and saw real gains on the media-rights side of the business — the kind of growth that reshaped the league's financial footing.

That growth is only half the real story, though. Engelbert has also come under real, sustained criticism in recent years over her relationship with players, tension that became sharper during contentious collective bargaining negotiations that ran into March and threatened the 2026 season before finally producing a deal that raised the salary cap to $7 million and created the league's first million-dollar salaries. Her tenure is genuinely a mixed one — real business expansion on one side, real labor friction on the other, not a simple win or a simple exit under pressure.

"We have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world, but right now we have the worst leadership in the world."

— Napheesa Collier, WNBPA vice president, on Engelbert's leadership

Not every player leader shares that harsh a read. WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike struck a far more measured tone, telling ESPN she has "great respect for the commitment Cathy brought to the role" and crediting her with leaving "a stronger foundation" for the league and its players. In her own retirement statement, Engelbert said she leaves "knowing we have built something bigger, stronger and more enduring than we could have imagined," thanking owners, staff, players, investors, and fans, and calling herself optimistic about the league's future.

The timing puts real weight on how the WNBA closes out this season — and on who the league's owners choose next, given how directly that choice will speak to which side of Engelbert's mixed legacy they want to build on. A commissioner search conducted in public, with a players' union this vocal and this recently burned by a contentious CBA fight, is its own genuine test of whether the league's ownership group actually absorbed the lesson of the last year or is simply waiting for the criticism to move on to someone else.

Sources: Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, NBC News