Every WNBA Arena and Its Capacity, Ranked

The 15 WNBA arenas in use for the 2026 season range from Portland's 19,393-seat Moda Center down to the Atlanta Dream's 3,500-seat Gateway Center Arena at College Park — a gap of nearly 16,000 seats between the biggest and smallest buildings in the same league. Seven teams share an NBA arena; the other eight play in NHL and casino arenas, college gyms, G League buildings and, in Toronto's case, a 1921 exhibition hall.

One warning before the table: the numbers below are the venues' listed capacities, not necessarily the number of seats a WNBA team actually sells. That distinction matters more in this league than in any other, and it's explained in full below the ranking.

All 15 WNBA Arenas, Ranked by Capacity

Notes on the figures: Climate Pledge Arena opened in 1962 as the Washington State Pavilion and was gutted and rebuilt inside its original roof, reopening in 2021. College Park Center lists up to 7,250 for sporting events; 7,000 is the figure normally quoted for Wings games. CareFirst Arena's 4,200 total drops to 4,111 in a basketball setup. Mortgage Matchup Center is the same Phoenix building that was called Footprint Center until 2025 and PHX Arena briefly after that.

Why a Listed NBA Capacity Is Not the WNBA Capacity

This is the single most misread thing about WNBA arenas. When a WNBA team moves into a 19,000-seat NBA building, it does not automatically sell 19,000 seats. Teams routinely curtain off the upper bowl, drape the top deck, or simply don't release those sections — the announced capacity for a WNBA game can be thousands below the number on the arena's website.

The New York Liberty are the clearest example. They moved into Barclays Center in 2021 and did not open the upper bowl for every home game until demand caught up with the building years later. Toronto shows the same thing from the other direction: Coca-Cola Coliseum lists a basketball capacity of 9,250, but Tempo sellouts in 2026 have been announced at 8,210, which is what the arena actually holds in the Tempo's configuration.

So read the table as a ceiling, not a ticket count. Where a team's real WNBA setup is publicly known and differs meaningfully from the venue figure, that gap is noted rather than papered over — this site does not invent venue specs, and any cell we could not verify against an official team or arena source is left blank rather than filled with a guess.

The Largest and Smallest Venues

Biggest: Moda Center, 19,393. Portland's building, home to the Trail Blazers since 1995, became the largest arena in the WNBA the moment the Fire returned in 2026. It did not stay theoretical: the Fire's first regular-season home game, on May 9, 2026, sold out at 19,335 — the largest crowd ever for a WNBA expansion team's debut, beating the 18,064 the Golden State Valkyries drew for theirs a year earlier.

Smallest: Gateway Center Arena @ College Park, 3,500. The Atlanta Dream's home is a 2019 building on the grounds of Georgia International Convention Center, shared with the NBA G League's College Park Skyhawks. It is smaller than most Division I college gyms, and the Dream's response to selling it out has been to move their biggest games 12 miles north (see below).

Between them sits an unusually barbelled distribution. Eight arenas hold more than 17,000. Four hold fewer than 7,500. Almost nothing sits in the middle. That is a direct fingerprint of the league's history: teams owned by NBA franchises inherited NBA buildings, and teams that were not spent two decades finding the cheapest venue that worked.

NBA Buildings vs. Practice-Facility-Sized Venues

Seven of the 15 WNBA teams share their arena with an NBA team:

• Portland Fire — Moda Center, with the Trail Blazers
• Los Angeles Sparks — Crypto.com Arena, with the Lakers (and the NHL's Kings)
• Minnesota Lynx — Target Center, with the Timberwolves
• Golden State Valkyries — Chase Center, with the Warriors
• New York Liberty — Barclays Center, with the Nets
• Indiana Fever — Gainbridge Fieldhouse, with the Pacers
• Phoenix Mercury — Mortgage Matchup Center, with the Suns

The other eight do not, and they split into three very different situations.

Big buildings without an NBA tenant. Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena (18,300) is a major-league arena in a city with no NBA team; the Storm are its primary basketball tenant alongside the NHL's Kraken. Las Vegas's Michelob Ultra Arena (12,000) is a Mandalay Bay resort venue, and Mohegan Sun Arena (9,323) is a casino arena in Uncasville, Connecticut — both are real arenas that simply belong to hospitality companies rather than an NBA club.

College and mid-size buildings. The Chicago Sky play at Wintrust Arena (10,387), which DePaul built in 2017. The Dallas Wings play at College Park Center (7,000) on the UT Arlington campus. The Toronto Tempo play at Coca-Cola Coliseum, a hockey and exhibition building on the Exhibition Place grounds.

G League-scale venues. Two teams play in buildings sized for the NBA's development league. The Washington Mystics' CareFirst Arena (4,200) opened in 2018 as the Entertainment and Sports Arena and doubles as the Washington Wizards' practice facility and the Capital City Go-Go's home. The Atlanta Dream's Gateway Center Arena (3,500) is the College Park Skyhawks' building. Both were sensible decisions in a smaller-crowd era and both are now the binding constraint on what those franchises can earn on a game night. For contrast with the men's game, see Every NBA Arena Ranked From Oldest to Newest.

The "New" Arenas in Portland and Toronto

Neither 2026 expansion team built anything. Both moved into buildings that were already there, and the two are about as far apart as two arenas can be.

Portland got the easy version: Moda Center, a 1995 NBA arena with a full concourse, a full press setup and 19,393 seats, ready to go from day one. The Fire's ownership group, RAJ Sports, has since pushed Multnomah County on Moda Center renovations and broke ground in February 2026 on a separate training center for professional women athletes in Hillsboro.

Toronto got the interesting version. Coca-Cola Coliseum opened in 1921 as the Coliseum at Exhibition Place and is, by a wide margin, the oldest building in the WNBA — older than any arena in the NBA or the NHL, both of whose oldest venues date to 1968. It was renovated ahead of the Tempo's arrival, and it holds about 8,200 for their games. Toronto is also the first WNBA franchise outside the United States, which has produced a home schedule no other team has ever run: alongside Coca-Cola Coliseum, the Tempo have played 2026 home games at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Bell Centre in Montreal and Rogers Arena in Vancouver. If you want the long view on venue age, The Oldest Stadiums Still in Use in American Sports puts the Coliseum in context, and Every NHL Arena Ranked From Oldest to Newest covers hockey's inventory.

Attendance Records and the Surge

The reason arena size is suddenly a live business question is that the WNBA's attendance has gone nearly vertical.

• 2024 drew 48% more fans than 2023.
• 2025 drew 2.501 million across 226 regular-season games, roughly 11,000 a night and the first single-season attendance record since 2002. Seven of the league's 13 teams averaged more than 10,000; a decade earlier, none did. The Valkyries led the league at 18,064 a game — a sellout every night in their first season — followed by Indiana (16,746) and New York (16,425).

The record book has moved with it:

The 2026 All-Star Game is the one to sit with: 19,783 at the United Center outsold that year's NBA All-Star Game, which drew 15,973 in Los Angeles. It was the first time the WNBA's showcase game has done that.

Some of the jump is player-driven — the arrival of Caitlin Clark in 2024, Paige Bueckers in 2025 and the rest of a remarkable rookie run traced in Every WNBA Rookie of the Year Winner, plus A'ja Wilson's four-MVP stretch in Every WNBA MVP Winner in League History. But the buildings are what convert that interest into revenue, which is why so many of them are about to change.

Games Moved to Bigger Arenas

The cleanest evidence that some teams have outgrown their buildings is how often they leave them. In 2025, six teams relocated home games against the Indiana Fever to larger venues: Atlanta to State Farm Arena, Chicago to the United Center, Connecticut to TD Garden in Boston, Dallas to American Airlines Center, Las Vegas to T-Mobile Arena, and Washington to CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore.

The practice has only expanded in 2026:

• The Atlanta Dream scheduled five of their 22 home games at State Farm Arena, then added a sixth, then moved playoff games there too. Their Georgia attendance record now sits at 17,608, set against Indiana in August 2024.
• The Chicago Sky have moved their Fever games to the United Center, where a crowd of 19,601 set a franchise record in only the second WNBA game ever staged in that building; the first, in June 2025, drew 19,496.
• The Washington Mystics moved their September 24 game against Chicago to Capital One Arena, the same building where the old single-game record was set.
• The Connecticut Sun played two home games at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford and one at TD Garden in Boston.
• The Toronto Tempo turned the concept into a national tour, playing home dates in Montreal and Vancouver.

Two teams are solving the problem permanently. The Dallas Wings will leave College Park Center for American Airlines Center, the Mavericks' and Stars' downtown arena, starting in 2027. And the Connecticut Sun were sold to Tilman Fertitta in a deal the WNBA and NBA approved on May 13, 2026; the franchise plays out 2026 in Connecticut and relocates to Houston for 2027. Both moves swap a small guaranteed venue for a big one, which is the whole story of this list in miniature.

For how the league got to 15 teams and where each one plays, see How Many WNBA Teams Are There - Every Team and Where They Play. For what happens in these buildings in September and October, see WNBA Playoff Format Explained and List of Every WNBA Champion by Year.

FAQ

What is the biggest WNBA arena? Moda Center in Portland, at 19,393 for basketball. The Portland Fire began playing there in 2026 as an expansion team, sharing the building with the NBA's Trail Blazers.

What is the smallest WNBA arena? Gateway Center Arena @ College Park, the Atlanta Dream's home, at 3,500 seats. The Washington Mystics' CareFirst Arena is next at 4,200.

How many WNBA teams share an arena with an NBA team? Seven of 15 in 2026: Portland, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Golden State, New York, Indiana and Phoenix.

What is the oldest WNBA arena? Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto, which opened in 1921. Climate Pledge Arena's structure dates to 1962 but was rebuilt in 2021.

What is the WNBA single-game attendance record? For a regular-season game, 20,996 — Toronto vs. Dallas at Bell Centre in Montreal on July 10, 2026. Counting every game type, the record is 22,076, set at WNBA Finals games in Detroit in 2003 and 2007.

Why do WNBA teams play in such small buildings? Mostly history and cost. Teams without an NBA parent picked venues sized to 1990s and 2000s crowds, and a smaller building with a good atmosphere used to be a better economic deal than a half-empty 18,000-seat arena. Attendance has since roughly doubled, which is why so many of those decisions are now being reversed.

Is the WNBA capacity the same as the NBA capacity in a shared arena? Usually not. WNBA teams frequently curtain off the upper bowl or hold back sections, so the announced capacity for a WNBA game is often well below the arena's listed figure.

Will this list change for 2027? Yes. The Dallas Wings move to American Airlines Center, and the Connecticut Sun relocate to Houston under new ownership. This page is updated each offseason as venues are confirmed.