A higher salary cap and Angel Reese in an Atlanta Dream uni won’t be the only new things for WNBA fans to pay attention to when the 2026 season kicks off next month.

The W held its expansion draft on Monday, which saw the two new teams that will begin competition this season pluck players from existing rosters to start building their inaugural squads. The Portland Fire and the Toronto Tempo grabbed a total of 22 players, 11 each from the collective rosters of the league’s 13 existing teams.

Among the highlights: the Fire selected Atlanta Dream guard Maya Caldwell, who last year averaged 4.8 points, 1.3 assists and 2.1 rebounds per game, and Sug Sutton, who last year put up a 6-3.5-1.7 statline as a guard for the Washington Mystics.

The Tempo took Aaliyah Nye, a six-foot swing player who was drafted last year by the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces. She played in 44 games, averaging 3.8 points, 0.5 assists and 1.5 rebounds en route to earning a championship ring with the Aces. The Tempo also took Adja Kane, a six-foot-three player originally from Paris, France, who was drafted in last year’s third round by the New York Liberty, and Nyara Sabally, a six-foot-five center from Germany, who over 76 games with the Liberty averaged 3.9 points, 0.5 assists and 3.3 rebounds per game.

The Tempo rounded out its picks with Nyadiew Puoch, a six-foot-three forward from Melbourne, Australia. Puoch, who was born in Tasmania to a South Sudanese mother, was originally drafted by the Dream in the 2004 draft’s first round. 

The WNBA approved the Fire and Tempo, its 14th and 15th teams, respectively, in 2024. The Tempo will be the league’s first Canadian team. While they’ll play in the same city as the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, the Tempo are slated to play most of their home games at the Coca-Cola Coliseum, home of the American Hockey League’s Toronto Marlies and the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s Toronto Sceptres. The Raptors play at the larger Scotiabank Arena, where the Tempo will reportedly play some games.

That arrangement mimics some other WNBA cities. In Atlanta, the Dream play most of their home games at the 3,500-seat Gateway Center Arena @ College Park, a facility adjacent to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, about 20 minutes from downtown. They occasionally play more well-attended games, such as when Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever visited last year, at the 18,000-seat State Farm Arena in downtown Atlanta.

This will be the second go-round for a Fire franchise in Portland, where the original squad by the same name played between 2000 and 2002, infamously being the only WNBA’s only team to shutter without ever making the playoffs. They’ll return to the Moda Center in Portland, which has been renamed from the Rose Garden when the team first played.