The Atlanta Dream beat the Golden State Valkyries 80-69 in Game 6 on Thursday, October 29, 2026, at State Farm Arena in Atlanta to force the first WNBA Finals Game 7 in league history. Allisha Gray scored 23 points and Rhyne Howard added 21 as Atlanta tied the series 3-3 and denied Golden State the championship on its home floor.
FINAL: Atlanta Dream 80, Golden State Valkyries 69. The winner-take-all Game 7 goes Saturday, October 31, at 8:00 p.m. ET at Chase Center in San Francisco, and whichever team wins it takes home the first WNBA championship in franchise history.
How to watch: Atlanta Dream vs Golden State Valkyries, Game 7, Saturday, October 31, 2026, 8:00 p.m. ET at Chase Center, San Francisco
WNBA Finals Game 7: A First In League History
This has never happened before, and the format explains why it took until now. The WNBA only moved its Finals to a best-of-seven series in 2025, and the first year of the new format produced no drama at the end: the Las Vegas Aces swept the Phoenix Mercury 4-0. A year later the league finally gets the game the format was built for, a single night with a championship on the line, between two teams that have never won one. Atlanta has reached the Finals three times before, in 2010, 2011 and 2013, and lost each time. Golden State is in just its second season as a franchise and is already one win from a title. One of those waits ends on Saturday night in San Francisco.
The scale of the first is worth sitting with. Every previous WNBA Finals was decided in five games or fewer, so no WNBA player, coach or fan has ever lived a Finals Game 7. Sportsnet put the moment plainly in its Game 6 takeaways: “For the first time in WNBA history, we’ve got a Game 7.” Atlanta earned it the hard way, losing Games 4 and 5 to fall behind 3-2, posting its lowest scoring games of the series in those two losses, and then answering with its best offensive night of the Finals with the season on the line.
Six First-Quarter Threes Build The Lead
Atlanta decided this game early. The Dream made six of eight three-pointers in the first quarter and raced to a 32-15 lead, the highest-scoring quarter by either team in this series, then stretched the margin to 46-26 by halftime. That 20-point halftime lead was tied for the fourth largest in WNBA Finals history, and Atlanta pushed the advantage as high as 25 points in the third quarter. It was a direct answer to Game 5, when Golden State held Atlanta to 22 points in the entire first half of a 65-55 loss; on Thursday the Dream matched that total in the first six and a half minutes.
Gray set the tone and closed the game. She finished with 23 points on 8-of-12 shooting, including 5-of-7 from three-point range, and when Golden State cut the lead to eight late in the fourth quarter, her corner three with under a minute left was the dagger that ended the rally. Howard scored 21 points with four threes of her own. Angel Reese, the league’s Defensive Player of the Year, delivered 15 points, 14 rebounds and a game-high six assists for her fourth double-double of the Finals. “Championship mentality. We just wanted to get this one,” Reese said postgame. “We needed the opportunity. That’s all we needed, and we maximized it today.” Dream coach Karl Smesko kept the focus forward: “There’s a mentality right now that yeah we’re happy we won but we know the job is not done. We have one more game.”
Williams Leads The Late Valkyries Push
Golden State did not go quietly. The Valkyries shot just 22-of-70 from the field and 7-of-27 from three, yet Gabby Williams kept them in reach almost on her own, scoring a game-high 26 points with most of the damage coming in the second half and a long personal run in the fourth quarter as the deficit shrank. Tiffany Hayes added 15 points, and the Valkyries trimmed a 16-point third-quarter gap down through the fourth until Gray’s late three restored order. There was a Canadian line in the box score too: Laeticia Amihere of Mississauga, Ontario, gave Golden State five points and 10 rebounds in 20 minutes off the bench, work that helped fuel the comeback attempt.
The setting added its own layer to the afternoon. Game 6 tipped at 12:30 p.m. ET, a matinee start forced by a scheduling conflict, with the Atlanta Hawks due to play in the same building on Thursday night. Golden State fans on the West Coast were up for a 9:30 a.m. local tip. None of it kept the crowd away: Atlanta announced a sellout, the building was full, and the Dream played like the rested, urgent team from the opening possession. Now the series returns to Chase Center, where Golden State gets the last game at home and Atlanta gets the role it just thrived in, the team with nothing left to protect. On Saturday night, for the first time ever, the WNBA season comes down to one game.
