The NWSL embarks on its 14th season with returning stars and 2 new teams

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The NWSL embarks on its 14th season with returning stars and 2 new teams

2026-03-13 07:07 Last Updated At：07:31

With two of its big stars back, two new teams joining the fold and an expanded broadcast presence, the National Women's Soccer League is embarking on its 14th season hoping to benefit from the surge in the popularity of women’s sports and from a summer focused on soccer.

The season begins Friday with the Portland Thorns playing at the Washington Spirit, which has been billed as a showdown between Sophia Wilson and Trinity Rodman.

The two players — two-thirds of the Triple Espresso trio with Mallory Swanson that helped the United States win the gold medal at the Paris Olympics — give the league a boost with their star power.

Wilson, who plays for Portland, was on leave all last season for the birth of her daughter. She signed a one-year contract extension with the Thorns for the 2026 season.

Swanson, who plays for the Chicago Stars, is still working her way back from maternity leave but is expected to rejoin the club at some point this season.

Rodman re-signed with the Spirit after drawn-out contract negotiations that called into question the league's salary cap and resulted in a new “High Impact Player” policy.

Rodman's return was a win for the league, which saw some of its high-profile players, including Naomi Girma, Alyssa Thompson and Sam Coffey, depart last year for European clubs.

There were fears that the salary cap would prevent teams from retaining top players. The HIP rule allows teams to go $1 million over the cap to sign certain players.

The league had the option of raising the salary cap, which stands at $3.7 million for 2026, instead of adopting the more complicated rule. Commissioner Jessica Berman stood by the decision in her preseason remarks this week.

“The mechanism of the High Impact Player rule actually rewards or creates an incentive for clubs to not only go out and sign elite players, but it creates space within the salary cap to surround that player with other top talent,” Berman said.

The league welcomes two new teams this season, the Denver Summit and the Boston Legacy, bringing the NWSL to 16 teams.

Denver opens the season Saturday at Bay FC. The Summit announced that it has sold over 50,000 tickets for the team's home opener against the Spirit on March 28 at Empower Field at Mile High, home of the NFL’s Denver Broncos.

The Legacy opens Saturday at Gillette Stadium against defending NWSL champion Gotham FC. Halftime will feature a performance by hometown group New Kids on the Block.

The league has awarded a 17th expansion team to Atlanta to begin play in 2028. Berman announced this week that another expansion club for 2028 will be awarded later this season.

The NWSL’s broadcast partners include CBS, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps-owned ION. The league expanded its media rights agreements last year, adding a new deal with Victory+ to air 57 games for free this season.

The league will also feature in ESPN's “Women's Sports Sundays” this summer.

“We will be working together with the WNBA to make sure that women's sports, and the NWSL and WNBA in particular, are showing up front and center to the way people think about and plan their weekend of sports content,” Berman said.

Berman said the league's viewership on traditional broadcast channels was up 20% last season, and up 30% on digital services.

The United States, Mexico and Canada are hosting the men's World Cup, soccer's premier tournament, this summer. The NWSL, which will pause play during a part of the tournament, faces logistical challenges in that two of its teams, the Seattle Reign and the Legacy, will be pushed out of home stadiums or otherwise impacted by the tournament.

The Reign will play three matches in Spokane, Washington, while the Legacy will play seven games in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

But the league also hopes to capitalize on the inevitable attention on soccer.

“I hope, when we look back on the season, that the challenges it created will dwarf in comparison to the opportunities it created because of the benefit and halo effect of the men's World Cup more broadly,” Berman said. “Our strategy around the summer of soccer is going to be a key area of focus for us.”

The Kansas City Current finished atop the standings in 2025 with a historic season and won the NWSL Shield, setting regular-season records for points (65), wins (21), home wins (11), road wins (10), shutouts (16) and fewest goals conceded (13).

Gotham FC, the eighth seed in the playoffs, eliminated Kansas City with a 2-1 quarterfinal victory. Gotham went on to defeat the Orlando Pride in the semifinals before a 1-0 victory over the Spirit for the NWSL title.

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A rare sanctuary in Congo looks after baby bonobos away from poaching threat

LOLA YA BONOBO, Congo (AP) — Micheline Nzonzi cradled a small and sleepy bonobo, an orphan whose life she will try to save over the next three years or so.

The 1-year-old's chances are good, with motherly affection, milk from a bottle and frequent play with other babies.

“Without me, without us, these bonobos cannot survive,” said Nzonzi, who has been a bonobo foster mother for 24 years. “They survive thanks to human affection.”

This primate nursery on the forested outskirts of the Congolese capital of Kinshasa is the world’s only sanctuary for orphaned bonobos, usually rescued from poachers or found trapped in the homes of locals who raise them for their meat.

Although great apes like the endangered bonobos are legally protected from hunters, they are still targeted to satisfy demand for bushmeat in areas far beyond the Congo Basin, an expansive rain forest that is sometimes called Earth’s second lung. The bushmeat trade ranges from rodents to antelopes, but a totemic ape like the bonobo may fetch a higher price.

“The bonobos are in danger. We are educating people to not kill the bonobos,” said Arsène Madimba, an educator with the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary. “We can’t kill them, we can’t put them at home as pets, we can’t eat them. Because of poaching, we can find big trading of orphaned bonobos across the country.”

Bonobos raise their babies for four to five years. Their low reproductive cycle means they are vulnerable to environmental disturbances. To protect them and their habitat, Congolese authorities last year broached the idea of issuing “bonobo credits,” similar to carbon credits, to reward communities for preserving forests. The program is yet to take off.

“There is a cultural difference” between Congo and neighboring Uganda, where apes are not hunted for meat, said primatologist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, founder of the Uganda-based Conservation Through Public Health group. “In Congo, they believe that you can become as strong as (the primate eaten)."

There are dozens of grown bonobos at Lola ya Bonobo. Some have lived there since 2002, when this sanctuary opened under the sponsorship of a conservation nonprofit known by its French name of Les Amis des Bonobos du Congo.

The nursery also has 11 young bonobos, with the most recent arriving earlier this year. Each baby is paired with a foster mother who will look after it for years before it can be transferred to bonobo groups open to visitors.

On rare occasions, an animal at Lola ya Bonobo eventually returns to the wild, which can take years of preparation.

Bonobos share nearly 99% of their DNA with humans and, along with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives.

In the 1980s, primatologists estimated about 100,000 bonobos were left in the wild. The number is now estimated at roughly 20,000, an astonishing decline. The bonobo is threatened primarily by the commercial bushmeat trade, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The bonobo’s natural habitat is an area of dense equatorial forest south of the Congo River. Bonobos are rarely studied in the wild, and much of what is known about them emerged from studies in foreign zoos and by foreign researchers drawn to a fascinating creature.

The bonobo was first identified as a possibly separate species in 1929, when German anatomist Ernst Schwarz noticed a difference in the skull of a specimen believed to be a grown chimpanzee with an unusually small head. Schwarz’s rival, an American zoologist named Harold Coolidge, later provided detailed descriptions that made it possible in 1933 to classify the bonobo as a separate species.

The bonobo is relatively well-known among Americans, due in part to its reputation as one of the most intelligent, peaceful and empathetic animals. They may even have a capacity for imagination, according to a study published in 2025 by Johns Hopkins University.

Bonobos are led by females and distinguished by their apparent lack of sexual jealousy. When two groups meet, females may switch sides without provoking a fight, unlike chimpanzees and gorillas. They may initiate casual mating, which happens so frequently, so intensely, and with such variety of style that bonobos are described as the “hippie apes.”

In Kinshasa, the trade in primate meat has gone underground. Traders need permits to hunt antelopes and other species, but trading in “les macaques” is prohibited in part to prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola.

“I used to sell monkeys before, but now we cannot sell monkeys, any type of monkeys,” said Charles Ntanga, a vendor at Masina market.

Ntanga wielded a flywhisk to swat flies that settled on the rancid carcass of a giant rodent before him, with a kilogram going for about $17. Guyva Mputu, the vendor next to him, was selling python, whose frozen flesh started to steam in the humid weather.

Baby bonobos captured by poachers are used to lure grown bonobos, which are shot when they come to investigate the noise, said Madimba of Lola ya Bonobo.

Orphaned bonobos build bonds with their caregivers, who often can identify each by name, said zookeeper Frank Lutete, whose role is to feed the animals. He paddled across the water to distribute papaya as the bonobos made a racket, coming down trees to collect his offerings.

Some bonobos thank him, he said, tapping their chests in a gesture of gratitude.

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