WASHINGTON – The 2026 Atlantic 10 Women’s Basketball Championship will be held at the Henrico Sports & Events Center in Henrico, Va., continuing the partnership that saw a widely successful Championship in 2024 and will be the home of the 2025 Championship.
The decision was finalized by the league’s athletic directors during the Annual Spring Meetings.
“We’re very pleased to extend our partnership with the Henrico Sports & Events Center to provide a home for the Women’s Basketball Championship through 2026,” stated Bernadette V. McGlade. We had a wildly successful first year in 2024, with record crowds and thrilling finishes and we expect to continue that success for the next two years.”
The A-10 will celebrate its 50th Anniversary in 2025-26, with the Women’s Basketball Championship as one of its marquee events, located right in the geographic footprint of the conference, with Richmond and VCU both in the city of Richmond and George Mason and George Washington just about 100 miles away.
The Atlantic 10 Women’s Basketball Championship was played at the new, state-of-the-art Henrico Sports & Events Center for the first time in 2024, with over 16,000 people attending the five-day Championship. The extension through 2026 guarantees three years for the A-10 in the 3,500-seat Henrico Sports & Events Center, which opened in 2023.
The 2024 Championship set attendance records, with the Friday quarterfinals seeing over 5,700 people in attendance and the first sellout in the history of the Henrico Sports & Events Center in the first session. The estimated economic impact brought into the Greater Richmond Area through the A-10 Women’s Basketball Championship was over $1.3 million in indirect spending.
Dennis Bickmeier, Executive Director of the Henrico Sports & Entertainment Authority, highlighted their successful first year, saying, “We are thrilled to continue hosting the A-10 Women’s Basketball Championship through 2026. Together with our partner, Richmond Region Tourism, we are committed to providing an exceptional experience for student-athletes, coaches, and fans. We look forward to many more exciting tournaments in Henrico.”
The 2026 event will be the ninth time in the last 12 years the championship has been hosted in the Richmond region. From 2014 through 2018, the tournament was played at the Richmond Coliseum, and in 2021, VCU hosted the league tournament on campus at the Siegel Center.
Richmond won the 2024 Championship and earned the league’s automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament, putting a bow on a fantastic season that saw the Spiders go 29-6 and win both the Regular Season and Tournament Championships.
Over the last seven years, the A-10 Women's Basketball Championship has produced seven different champions. The championship enjoys national television and streaming coverage for all five rounds, with ESPN+ broadcasting the first and second rounds. This coming season, the Quarterfinals will air on NBC / USA Network for the first time. CBS Sports Network airs the semifinals and ESPN carries the championship final on ESPN2 or ESPNU.
The A-10 is one of seven conferences, among 32 leagues, where the women's basketball championship operates at a neutral site as a standalone event.
The arena features 39,000 square feet of event space, including four team locker rooms, two locker room areas for officials and ancillary meeting and support space. A high-tech LED scoreboard and full modern broadcast connections provide for enhanced television and streaming coverage of the championship. Henrico County is part of the Richmond, Va., metropolitan area.