THE 2026 WOMEN'S FIBA WORLD CUP: WILL THE ISA WIN ANOTHER TITLE?

The FIBA World Cup is a basketball tournament held every four years consisting of 16 teams. The 16 teams drawn were the winners of the 2025 Continental Cup and were broken into four groups. In the days between September 4-13, 2026 in Berlin, Germany, the United States, China, Czech Republic, Italy, Belgium, Australia, Puerto Rico, Turkey, Hungary, South Korea, Nigeria, France, Japan, Spain, Germany and Mali will be competing for the chance to win gold, silver and/or bronze! The goal of the FIBA World Cup is to promote basketball and to let national teams play each other outside of the Summer Olympics. 

The first female FIBA World Cup was held on March 7, 1953, in Santiago, Chile. In the first FIBA championship, only 10 teams played. The first women’s FIBA games occurred three years after the men’s. In 1953, the USA won 1st, Chile 2nd and France 3rd.

In the USA’s September 4th, 2026 win against China, the leading scorers for USA were Caitlin Clark from the Indiana Fever with 14 points and 11 assists, Atlanta Dream player Rhyne Howard, also with 14 points; for China, 19 year old, 7 '3 Zhang Ziyu had 13 points and 2 blocks, and number 15, Han Xu, stacked up 11 points, 10 rebounds and 3 assists. The USA head coach, Kara Lawson, had a lot of nice things to say about China’s defense: "Their size in the frontcourt clearly is a matchup problem for, I think, every team in the world and I thought we did a pretty good job managing that." Head coach Kara Lawson stated.

On September 6th, 2026, USA and Italy had a low scoring match. The USA only won by 3 points against Italy (USA with 55 and Italy with 52). On Italy’s side, Golden State Valkyries player, Cecilia Zandalasini had 14 points and 7 rebounds. Mariella Santucci had 9 points to help Italy still be in the game until the end. For the USA, Las Vegas Aces player, Jackie Young, had 10 points and Breanna Stewart, player for the New York Liberty, had 5 points and 11 rebounds. Stewart expressed "Obviously, Italy really kind of mucked up the game for us a little bit. [...] They are a tough team. Tons of respect to what they've done, [and I’m] just proud of the resiliency of this group."

The following day, the USA and Czech Republic competed, and the USA had an easy 105-64 win against the Czech Republic. The USA had 6 people in double figures, one of them being Stewart with 17 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists. In addition, Mystics forward Kiki Iriafen scored 7 points and 11 rebounds. As for the Czech Republic, point guard Eliska Joklova had 19 points and was 11/14 from the free throw line, Veronika Vorackova almost had a double double, scoring 8 points and 9 rebounds to end the game.