The PWHL has revealed the location of its twelfth—and presumably final—expansion franchise ahead of the 2026–27 season: San Jose. Its addition to the PWHL landscape comes during a two-week stretch of expansion announcements that have also brought new teams to Detroit, Las Vegas, and Hamilton, Ont.
Alongside the NHL’s Sharks, the newest PWHL team will join the MLS’s Earthquakes in San Jose, among other San Francisco Bay Area women’s teams, including the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries and the NWSL’s Bay FC. PWHL San Jose will share the 17,000-seat SAP Center with the Sharks.
Vegas’s new franchise continues the city’s ascent as a sports mecca: In the past nine years, the Raiders (2020) and the Aces (2018) both relocated to Sin City, while the Golden Knights were added as an NHL expansion team in 2017 and won the Stanley Cup in 2023. The city’s PWHL team will share T-Mobile Arena, which seats 17,500 for hockey, with the Aces and Golden Knights.
Hamilton will be the third of the league’s franchises in Ontario; the Sceptres play less than an hour down the road in Toronto, while the Charge play in Ottawa. PWHL Hamilton will share the newly renovated 18,000-seat TD Coliseum with Hamilton’s new AHL team, the New York Islanders affiliate that relocated from Bridgeport, Conn., at the end of this season.
