Chicago prepares for 2026 WNBA All-Star Weekend with a pitch

The explosive growth of women’s sports has been a well-documented phenomenon over the last four years.

But when Chicago hosts the 2026 WNBA All-Star Weekend in July, Kara Bachman — the executive director of the Chicago Sports Commission — wants the city’s investors and businesses to do more than just cheer from the sidelines.

“Do a little more,” Bachman said Friday during a launch event in Fulton Market. “Put your money where your mouth is.”

The league’s All-Star festivities will return to Chicago for the second time from July 23-25, with the game scheduled for Saturday, July 25 at the United Center. Those dates are more than six months away — but planning already has begun for a cornerstone of the WNBA calendar.

The latest step of that process took place Friday in a launch event headlined by Gov. JB Pritzker, mayor Brandon Johnson and part-owner Dwyane Wade as the Sky and the city made their pitch to local investors and business leaders to take part in the weekend.

According to a report by Front Office Sports, Chicago was the only city to bid for hosting the 2026 All-Star weekend. The reticence from other teams? Hosting duties are split between the host team and the league, making the weekend an expensive affair as the standard for logistics such as hotels, parties and activations rise meteorically with the sport as a whole.

Sky co-owner and operating chair Nadia Rawlinson spearheaded the pitch for Chicago to land the event. She said the Sky are embracing the responsibility as an opportunity to highlight Chicago as a whole. While some features — a welcoming event, sponsor activations featuring star players, an invite-only party organized in collaboration with the players union — will be familiar from past iterations, Friday’s launch outlined a series of plans and initiatives to expand the event’s footprint.

This includes a series of VIP roundtable dinners in the months leading up to the event and an innovation summit to highlight and support advancements in women’s sports. During All-Star weekend, Rawlinson said the Sky will host a radio row to highlight prominent sports and business shows. The Sky also plan to partner with the city for a series of community initiatives around the weekend, including a project to add the WNBA 3-point line to basketball courts at every public park in Chicago.

Throughout the weekend, Rawlinson emphasized that the Sky and the WNBA will seek to highlight the diversity of the league’s fanbase.

“The WNBA is (a place) where everyone can find their person,” Rawlinson said. “They can find connection. This is a place where typically people who don’t have a natural community can find community. This is our chance to highlight that.”

Chicago hosted the 2022 WNBA All-Star Game at Wintrust Arena — home of the Sky. For the first time in franchise history, the team last season played two regular-season games at the United Center. The home of the NBA’s Bulls and NHL’s Blackhawks has nearly double the capacity of Wintrust’s 10,380.