At least 5 out LGBTQ players are chasing a WNBA championship. Here’s who they are.
The Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries will tip off the 30th WNBA Finals on Saturday in San Francisco.
Mark
The 2026 WNBA Finals hold plenty of potential crowning moments in tow for either the Atlanta Dream or the Golden State Valkyries when the best-of-seven series gets underway.
Fans are guaranteed to see a first-time WNBA champion as two teams that showed dominant streaks during this season prepare to clash.
Among those stars are several out LGBTQ players who drove their teams to the championship precipice, most notably the Valkyries’ Gabby Williams and Atlanta’s Jordin Canada.
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Gabby Williams, Valkyries
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Williams led the Valkyries in multiple categories during their run to the finals, including points, assists, steals and three-pointers made.
Cecelia Zandalasini, Valkyries
Gabby Williams linked up regularly with fellow out starter Cecelia Zandalasini and Kiah Stokes to push “Ballhalla” to its first WNBA Finals berth in only its second year of existence.
Tiffany Hayes, Valkyries
The championship pedigree shared between those three and their fellow out teammate Tiffany Hayes showed itself in taking down the upstart Dallas Wings and sweeping the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces on their home court to reach the WNBA Finals.
The Valkyries will look to capitalize on their success against the Dream in the regular season.
Golden State defeated Atlanta in all three of their regular season matchups, including a 78-75 win on Valkyries Pride Night made famous by Williams and Stokes using the “For The Gays” rallying cry to motivate the team.
All three of those wins came during the Valkyries’ franchise-record nine-game winning streak from late June to mid-July.
Jordin Canada, Dream
On the Dream side, Canada played like an undeniable force alongside fellow out starter and WNBA legend DeWanna Bonner and regular-season WNBA rebounds leader Angel Reese. Canada leads the Dream in all the same postseason stat categories as Williams, and her pairing with Reese provides one of the most physical on-court tandems in the league.
Rhyne Howard and Alisha Gray round out a starting lineup that built the Dream into an offensive powerhouse that swept both the Washington Mystics and New York Liberty and brought the team back to the WNBA Finals for the first time since 2013, but there is a larger story for the Dream beyond the on-court action.
DeWanna Bonner, Dream
Bonner joined the Dream late in the season after the Phoenix Mercury bought out her contract in order for her to join a team in playoff contention in her final WNBA season.
Leaving her fiancée Alyssa Thomas behind in Arizona, Bonner took her 17 years of WNBA experience to the Dream and became a key contributor both as a starter and coming off the bench.
The 39-year-old looks to end her career full of accolades, including her place as the third all-time leading scorer in WNBA history, with a third WNBA championship and giving the city of Atlanta its first non-Braves pro sports championship since Atlanta United’s 2018 MLS Cup win.
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It’s also fitting that opposing Bonner — the second-oldest player in the 2026 WNBA postseason — is Valkyries bench contributor and first draft pick in team history, 20-year-old Juste Jocyte, putting different generations of women’s basketball on the court simultaneously at the WNBA’s highest level of popularity.
That generation-spanning nature, the emergence of two teams beyond the recent dominance of the Aces, and pop culture obsession with the Indiana team and what teams mean to their cities, make the 30th WNBA Finals worthy of such a benchmark designation.
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