2026 Women’s Final Four coming to Phoenix with women’s basketball reaching new heights

By Jeff Metcalfe

Arizona’s lengthy wait to complete its major sports events host catalogue will be rewarded when the NCAA Women’s Final Four arrives in 2026 with the sport surging in popularity.

Record viewing (18.7 million) for the 2024 college women’s basketball championship game, fueled by a match-up of Iowa featuring Caitlin Clark vs. undefeated South Carolina, created a new paradigm for what is possible for the Final Four.

The immediate beneficiaries are the next two Final Fours – 2025 in Tampa then in Phoenix – partly because the burgeoning women’s basketball audience already is familiar with such stars as Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, USC’s JuJu Watkins and Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo. 

Watkins and Hidalgo still will be in college in 2025-26 when the Final Four comes west for just the third time since 1999 (San Jose, 2012 Denver). 

“This is the one major event that has eluded us until now,” Ron Price, Phoenix local organizing committee co-chair, said Monday during a press conference unveiling the 2026 Women’s Final Four logo. 

Metro Phoenix previously has hosted three Super Bowls, 2016 College Football Playoff championship and NCAA Men’s Final Four in 2017 and 2024 along with other jewels such as NBA and WNBA All-Star Games. 

Phoenix bid in 2001 to host the 2007 Women’s Final Four that instead was awarded to Cleveland. Its 2020 virtual bid, made during the COVID pandemic, proved successful because of significant upgrades in the downtown area and a deeper history of hosting major events.

“They were able to convince the committee that even though Phoenix had not hosted a women’s basketball regional or other parts of our championship that it was absolutely poised and positioned to be able to take as a first-time host the Women’s Final Four,” said Lynn Holzman, Lynn Holzman, NCAA vice president of women’s basketball. 

The Phoenix Women’s Final Four games will be played April 3 and 5, 2026, at Footprint Center, home of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury. The Mercury have hosted three WNBA All-Star Games including in 2024.

Holzman said the Women’s Final Four games being in downtown Phoenix creates a different dynamic than for the Men’s Final Four, where games are played at State Farm Stadium in Glendale.

“It’s very accessible for our fans to navigate,” Holzman said. “During the bid, Phoenix was able to demonstrate what was coming online hotel-wise and other positive aspects of the downtown community to convince the committee that is was time to award Phoenix the Women’s Final Four and a chance to come west.”

Phoenix will join Minneapolis (2022) and Dallas (2023) as recent Women’s Final Four host cities also with a WNBA team.

“We see that as an opportunity to work together with the Mercury and also the Suns to leverage that as a way for everyone to celebrate that the Women’s Final Four is coming here and what we can continue to do to elevate women’s basketball,” Holzman said.

The Arizona major events host committee, led by CEO Jay Parry and senior vice president Kyle Hedstrom, is taking on local organizing committee responsibilities as it did for the 2023 Super Bowl and 2024 Men’s Final Four. Arizona State is the NCAA host institution and plays a major role in planning and execution.

“We want to make sure we’re understanding how the NCAA wants to continue this upward trajectory for women’s events then we want to lend the phenomenal support around women’s basketball in particular to that,” Hedstrom said.

LOC committee members will be in Tampa for the 2025 Women’s Final Four (April 4-6) “to take some lessons from that and apply it to our planning for the next 365 days. 

“It’ll be engaging with the community, making sure everyone is aware of what’s going on, the ways to get involved in volunteer opportunities. It starts now especially that we have our logo. It’s going to be a little bit more front and center.”