Breanna Stewart is staying in New York, and she says there is no move coming any time soon. The forward has re-signed with the New York Liberty for the 2026 season, keeping one of the WNBA’s biggest stars with the team she joined in 2023.
“This is home. This is where [my family is] rooted now, and we don’t want to leave. I’m a New York girl,” Stewart said, making plain that the decision was about more than basketball. She added that she knew she was going to return, but wanted the deal made official on a longer timeline because that was exactly what she wanted.
The timing matters because the Liberty are trying to move past a year that ended far differently from the one before it. New York won the WNBA championship in 2024, then was knocked out early in the 2025 playoffs. Stewart’s return gives the team a centerpiece as it heads toward the league’s 30th season, a milestone year that comes with heightened attention on the sport and the players who drive it.
Stewart said her own 2025 season never fully opened up after a knee bone bruise limited her to 31 appearances. She said she is healed now and wants to show that her standard remains far higher than what she produced last year. “I had a subpar season last year, by my standards, and I know that I can be the best. I want to go out and show that every single night,” she said.
That confidence is part of what has made Stewart such a central figure in the league, and it is also why her decision to stay carries weight beyond one roster move. She has been with the Liberty since 2023, helped the team reach the top in 2024 and now remains in place as the franchise tries to reset after the early exit. Stewart also said she thinks the league’s future should include every team having its own practice facility and games in bigger arenas, a sign that her view of the sport stretches well beyond this season.
Her off-court life has also become firmly rooted in New York. Stewart and her wife, Marta Xargay Casademont, a former guard for the Phoenix Mercury, are parents of two. She said that reality helped lock in the idea that New York is where she belongs.
Stewart’s latest partnership with Pinterest was announced during the Liberty home opener on May 8, and she said she uses the platform to inspire her tunnel walks. She is also busy with Unrivaled, the three-on-three women’s professional league she founded with Napheesa Collier in 2025, adding another layer to a schedule that already puts her at the center of the women’s basketball calendar.
She also sounded eager for the broader changes coming to the sport. Stewart said she is excited about the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, which raised salaries and expanded family-planning benefits, and said she is looking forward to wearing retro jerseys and appreciating that milestone. For New York, the more immediate meaning is simpler: its best-known player has chosen to stay, and she is coming back saying she still has more to prove.
