Best of the Bay 2026 Editors’ Pick: Golden State Valkyries

We’re celebrating Best of the Bay 2026 with a multitude of Editors’ Picks of things we love. Please join us at our 13th Annual Gala on October 27 to celebrate even more! The Bay is buzzing right now with news that our first big league women s basketball team is headed to the WNBA finals. It s been an astronomical rise. In 2025, the same year the Oakland Athletics moved into the 15,000-capacity Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, home of the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, the Golden State Valkyries made their highly anticipated debut at San Francisco s Chase Center. The team defied typical expansion-team struggles, finishing 23-21 and becoming the first expansion franchise in WNBA history to make the playoffs in its debut season. Valkyries fans at Chase Center July 18. Photo by D.A. Mission But that transmittable energy, the effect they had immediately on Bay Area fans, was electric. Anyone who commutes on BART in the early and late parts of the evening that inaugural seaso