Every WNBA MVP Winner in League History

The WNBA has handed out a Most Valuable Player award in all 29 of its completed seasons, from Cynthia Cooper in 1997 through A'ja Wilson in 2025. Wilson's four MVPs are the most in league history — she passed Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson, who each won three. Sixteen different players have won it.

Below is the complete list, season by season, with each winner's position, team and the stat line that got her there. The 2026 season is still being played, so the list ends at 2025; this page will be updated once the 2026 award is announced in September 2026.

The Complete WNBA MVP Winners List, 1997–2025

A'ja Wilson's Four MVPs — and Where They Rank

Wilson won the award in 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025. No one else in WNBA history has four. She got the fourth on September 21, 2025, taking 51 of 72 first-place votes and finishing with 657 points to Napheesa Collier's 534 and Alyssa Thomas's 391.

The 2025 season was arguably her strangest MVP case and her best one. She started slowly by her own standards, watched Collier open up a lead in the public conversation after the All-Star break, then closed with a run that ended the argument — 26.1 points and 12 rebounds a game during a 16-game Aces winning streak. She finished at 23.4 points, 10.2 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 2.3 blocks and 1.6 steals per game while shooting 50.5% from the field and a career-high 42.4% from three.

Four in six years also puts her in rare company across American team sports. In the NBA, only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (six), Bill Russell and Michael Jordan (five each) and LeBron James (four) have matched or beaten that total, and the NBA has been giving out its MVP since the 1955–56 season — roughly twice as long as the WNBA has existed. The NBA's postseason equivalent is catalogued in Every NBA Finals MVP Winner in History; for the football version, see Every NFL MVP Winner in League History, where Peyton Manning's five is the record.

The Three-Time Winners: Swoopes, Leslie and Jackson

Before Wilson, three players sat at the top of the list with three MVPs each.

Sheryl Swoopes (2000, 2002, 2005) was the first to get there, and all three came with the Houston Comets. She is the only guard-forward on this list to win three, and her 2005 season is unusual for an MVP campaign: 18.6 points and 4.3 assists per game on a team that did not reach the Finals.

Lisa Leslie (2001, 2004, 2006) won hers with the Los Angeles Sparks, spread across six seasons and two very different eras of the franchise. Her 2001 award came in the same year she won Finals MVP for a championship Sparks team.

Lauren Jackson (2003, 2007, 2010) won all three with the Seattle Storm and made history with the first one. When she won in 2003 at age 22, she became both the first non-American MVP and the youngest player to win the award.

Below them: four players with two apiece — Cynthia Cooper (1997, 1998), Candace Parker (2008, 2013), Elena Delle Donne (2015, 2019) and Breanna Stewart (2018, 2023). Delle Donne and Stewart share a distinction the others don't: they won their two MVPs with two different franchises. Delle Donne won with Chicago and then Washington; Stewart with Seattle and then New York.

The Unanimous MVPs

Only two players have ever swept every first-place vote.

• Cynthia Cooper, 1997. The inaugural MVP, in the inaugural season, for the team that would win the first four titles.
• A'ja Wilson, 2024. All 67 first-place votes, 27 years after Cooper. Napheesa Collier was second with 467 points; Breanna Stewart third with 295.

For scale, the NBA has produced exactly one unanimous MVP in about 70 seasons — Stephen Curry in 2015–16. The WNBA has two in 29. Wilson's 2025 repeat was not unanimous, which is worth noting because a fair number of headlines that September got it wrong: she took 51 of 72 first-place votes, not all 72.

MVP and Finals MVP in the Same Year

Winning the regular-season award and then the Finals award in a single season has happened eight times, to seven players:

Wilson's 2025 version went one step further than any of the others. She won MVP, shared Defensive Player of the Year, and then took Finals MVP as the Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury 4-0, closing it out 97-86 on October 10 with 31 points, nine rebounds, four assists, three blocks and two steals. She averaged 28.5 points across the four Finals games. No player in WNBA history had ever held all three of those awards in one season.

That Defensive Player of the Year award is itself a footnote worth keeping: the 2025 vote ended in a tie, with Wilson and the Minnesota Lynx's Alanna Smith each drawing 29 votes. It was the first time two players shared the award. For the men's version of that award, see Every NBA Defensive Player of the Year Winner.

The full championship record is in List of Every WNBA Champion by Year, and the franchise totals are in Which WNBA Teams Have Won the Most Championships.

The International Winners

Two MVPs were born outside the United States.

Lauren Jackson (Australia) is the landmark case. She was born in Albury, New South Wales, played her junior basketball in Australia rather than the American college system, and arrived in Seattle as the No. 1 overall pick in 2001. Her 2003 MVP made her the first non-American winner, and she added two more in 2007 and 2010. She remains the only MVP to have been developed entirely outside the U.S. pipeline.

Jonquel Jones (Bahamas) won in 2021 with the Connecticut Sun, averaging 19.4 points and 11.2 rebounds. Born in Freeport, she played college basketball at George Washington in the United States, and she is a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which she represents internationally. She later won Finals MVP with the New York Liberty in 2024.

The Finals MVP award has been slightly more international: Jackson (2010), Belgium's Emma Meesseman (2019) and Jones (2024) have all won it.

What the List Tells You About the League

A few patterns hold up across 29 seasons.

Big players win it. Counting forwards, centers and forward-centers together, the frontcourt has taken the award in the large majority of seasons. Only Cooper, Swoopes and Taurasi have won it as guards or guard-forwards, and none since 2009.

Winners cluster on winners. The Comets, Sparks, Storm and Aces account for more than half the awards. That is partly causation running both directions: MVPs make good teams, and good teams get MVPs more attention.

The award has gotten harder to repeat. Between 1997 and 2010, four different players won it at least three times. Between 2011 and 2019, nine seasons produced eight different winners. Then Wilson took three of the last four.

The pool is genuinely deep now. With 15 teams in 2026 — up from 12 as recently as 2024 — and a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement ratified in March 2026, the roster and salary landscape is changing fast. For the current league map, see How Many WNBA Teams Are There - Every Team and Where They Play, and for the pay structure, How Much Do WNBA Players Get Paid - The Salary Structure, Explained.

FAQ

Who has won the most WNBA MVP awards? A'ja Wilson, with four (2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025). Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson each won three.

Who won the 2025 WNBA MVP? A'ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, with 51 of 72 first-place votes. She averaged 23.4 points, 10.2 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.3 blocks per game.

Who is the 2026 WNBA MVP? Nobody yet. The 2026 regular season runs through September 24, 2026, and the award is announced during the playoffs. This page will be updated as soon as the winner is official.

Has anyone won WNBA MVP unanimously? Twice. Cynthia Cooper in 1997 and A'ja Wilson in 2024, who took all 67 first-place votes.

Who was the first non-American WNBA MVP? Lauren Jackson of the Seattle Storm, in 2003. The Australian was 22 at the time, also making her the youngest MVP in league history.

Has a player ever won Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season? Yes — Candace Parker, in 2008 with the Los Angeles Sparks. She is still the only one. The full rookie list is at Every WNBA Rookie of the Year Winner.

Who votes for WNBA MVP? A national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. The panel has grown with the league — it was 67 voters in 2024 and 72 in 2025 — and voters submit a ranked ballot, with points awarded by placement rather than first-place votes alone.

Where do these players play their home games? Arena by arena, in Every WNBA Arena and Its Capacity, Ranked.