Up until the final seconds of the final game on the final day of the regular season, two playoff seeds and two of the four first-round matchups hung in the balance. For a long stretch late on Thursday night, it seemed the Las Vegas Aces would leap the Golden State Valkyries for the No. 2 seed. But with 20 seconds to play in Los Angeles, Gabby Williams hit a game-winning 3-pointer to complete the Valkyries' stunning 13-point fourth-quarter comeback, which kept Golden State in second and Las Vegas in third.
With that, the bracket for the 2026 WNBA playoffs was set. Here are the first-round matchups: The Lynx are the favorites, but this is a wide-open race. Nothing signifies that more than the fact that the Liberty, the preseason favorites, are their opponent in the first round.
So, which team will win it all? Ahead of Sunday's quadruple header featuring Game 1 of every first-round series, we asked our experts. WNBA Finals pick: No. 1 Lynx over No. 2 Valkyries The gap between the top eight teams and the rest of the league in the regular season was so vast that we're left with eight elite teams in the postseason, with only seven games separating the Lynx at the top and the Liberty at No. 8.
Last year, there was a seven-game gap between the No. 1 and No. 4 seeds. Truly, picking most of these series, especially in the first round, feels like flipping a coin. Let's start with the top half of the bracket.
Liberty is a rematch of the 2024 WNBA Finals that the Liberty took in a controversial Game 5 overtime that has no doubt kept the Lynx up at night for the past two years. On one hand, the Liberty won the season series 2-1 while the Lynx have lost four of their last six and wunderkind Olivia Miles sat out the last two games of the regular season due to a left calf injury. So, I'm picking a Liberty upset, right?
Ultimately, the Lynx have too much depth and, most importantly, a big advantage on the sidelines -- which isn't as much a dig on Chris DeMarco as it is a compliment of Cheryl Reeve. I've gone back and forth on who their semifinal opponent could be -- the Dream or Mystics -- but ultimately chose the Mystics to get the upset. Washington won the season series over Atlanta and has a frontcourt that can shut down the Dream in the paint.
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