Breanna Stewart Announces New Max Liberty Contract Ahead of 2026 WNBA Season

Two-time WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart is returning to the New York Liberty.

According to ESPN's Michael Voepel and Alexa Philippou, Stewart announced on her podcast that she's agreed to a three-year max contract to return to the Liberty.

She'll make $1.19 million in 2026.

Leaving aside 2019, when she was recovering from an Achilles tear, Stewart had one of the more frustrating seasons in her pro career in 2025. A bone bruise in her right knee forced her to miss 13 games during the regular season, and she fought through a left knee injury during New York's first-round exit at the hands of the Phoenix Mercury.

The 6'4" forward wasn't the offensive force fans have come to expect, either. Her scoring average (18.3 points) was her lowest since her rookie year in 2016, and she set a career low in three-point percentage (24.1).

Still, Stewie's reputation preceded her. She was one of the best players in a loaded free-agent class, and pretty much every team in the league would've jumped at the chance to sign her.

Whether Stewart stuck around in the Big Apple was a little less certain.

The Liberty didn't have the same sharpness in 2025 that they possessed while winning their first-ever championship a season before.

Injuries played a role in that. In addition to Stewart, Jonquel Jones was sidelined for 13 games. Two-way star Betnijah Laney-Hamilton missed the entire year due to knee surgery. By the time the playoffs rolled around, head coach Sandy Brondello was using a seven-player rotation.

Laney-Hamilton's absence exacerbated the effect of losing Kayla Thornton, who went on to earn her first All-Star nod, in the Golden State Valkyries' expansion draft.

Still, an opening-round defeat to Phoenix spoke for itself. The Big Three of Stewart, Jones and Sabrina Ionescu didn't play as well as they needed, and general manager Jonathan Kolb assembled a supporting cast that wasn't good enough to fill in the gaps.

The situation wasn't too dissimilar to Stewart's 2022 season with the Seattle Storm.

That team went 22-14 in the regular season before falling to the Las Vegas Aces in the semifinals. Legendary guard Sue Bird was in her farewell campaign, and Seattle's all-in approach meant the roster had a lot of other aging vets (Tina Charles, Briann January, Epiphanny Prince and Jantel Lavender) who provided diminishing returns.

The Storm needed a massive overhaul in order to seriously contend for a title again, and Stewart concluded the grass was greener on the East Coast. She was ultimately proven correct.

In the end, Stewart concluded the Liberty still put her in the best position to chase a fourth championship.

Not only is New York running it back with Jones and Ionescu, but it also signed three-time All-Star Satou Sabally. Kolb doesn't have a lot of cap space left to distribute to the rest of the roster, so depth is going to be a big question here.

But nobody in the league will have a quartet as good as Stewart, Ionescu, Jones and Sabally.