With 18 Days Until the 2026 FIBA Women's World Cup, France Has 11 WNBA Players Eligible and Still No Final Roster
The French national team was one point shy of sending the 2024 Olympic gold medal game against the United States to overtime.
Since then, players like Gabby Williams, Marine Johannes, and most recently the 2025 #2 overall pick Dominique Malonga are dazzling in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA).
Malonga, at 20 years old in her second WNBA season, was the youngest player on France's Paris 2024 Olympic team. She seems very likely to make Les Bleues' roster, whenever it is finalized.
"It would mean everything," she told Roberta F. Rodrigues, Tempestade Talk co-host, on Sunday at Climate Pledge Arena.
"I feel really proud every time I get the opportunity to represent my country — especially for the World Cup. It's really big, and especially this upcoming one. I feel like this is a World Cup that can be different for us from the competitions before.” The thing is, Malonga doesn't know if she'll be there. Neither does anyone else.
Less than 20 days from the 2026 FIBA Women's World Cup, the 2024 Olympic silver medalists still have no final roster.
Will that cost them a shot at the World Cup Final — and another meeting with the United States?
"We don't really know the roster."
While the French team did name 32 athletes to participate in a pre-tournament camp, there is no timeline for the final FIBA World Cup roster.
French guard Marine Johannes was named to the list of 32, but will remain with the New York Liberty until the WNBA takes an International Break at the end of this month.
"They are doing a training game in a few days with some of the players that are not playing here," Johannes said, "and then they will give us the roster, but we don't really know when and who's going to make it."
Her French teammate and Liberty rookie Marine Fauthoux was equally in the dark when asked about pacing herself for the World Cup break. "Even as French team, we don't know who's gonna go to the FIBA World Cup," she said. "Just being focused like day after day."
Fauthoux, who was recently signed to a multiyear deal when New York waived 2024 champion Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, is expected to leave the team early for the French national team camp.
Pauline Astier, the third Liberty player in France's extended pool, put it plainly: "We don't know the list either. I hope I'm gonna be in the team, of course, but I'm just trying to think about what happened now and not after."
Three players on the same WNBA roster. Three players in France's 32-player pool. None of them know if they're going to Berlin.
Not New — But It Is Different
A couple years ago, the WNBA prioritization rule was a hot topic as the best women's basketball players in the world set foot in Paris for the Olympics. However, not all of them were coming from the WNBA. Not on Les Bleues, anyway.
Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, French players were forced to choose between their WNBA teams and their national team. The fracture, although it didn't only impact French players, was most acutely felt by people like Gabby Williams, Marine Johannes, and Belgian player Emma Meesseman.
They built careers, and in Williams and Meesseman's case, won NCAA and WNBA titles in the United States, and now had to weigh professional contracts against representing their country.
"As a player, I obviously criticized the prioritization rule that the WNBA implemented," German Olympian Satou Sabally told reporters in Paris.
"I think it's really bad to punish international players, especially players coming from France — they can't come over at all anymore. That's just unfair. And I think the NBA does a better job of incorporating international players and also pushing them in the media."
"I agree 100% with Satou," Meesseman told me for CBS Sports during the 2024 Olympic quarterfinals. "I mean, there's a reason why I'm not really playing in the WNBA. I really said since the beginning that I don't feel supported in that rule."
Meesseman did briefly return to the WNBA to compete for the New York Liberty in August 2025. The two-time WNBA champion and 2019 WNBA Finals MVP has not returned to the league after the Liberty's surprising 2025 playoffs first-round exit. What a difference a couple of years makes. France currently has 11 WNBA players eligible for the FIBA World Cup.
Johannes acknowledged the shift directly: "Now they recognize that we have a lot of French people playing here in this league, and they had to change it," she said last week.
The acknowledgment matters. However, the execution is still catching up.
The French Connection
France could have upwards of 11 players on a 12-player roster who are currently active in the WNBA — second only to the United States.
No other team is expected to carry more than seven, with Australia already naming seven WNBA players to their finalized roster.
Johannes described a scenario where WNBA players would join the national team with minimal ramp-up time — two days of practice before the first game.
"We might be in the same situation as Team USA," she said. "Playing here in this league and just going there, practicing like two days and playing the first game. It's going to be tough."
While this is new for Les Bleues, especially in comparison to the lead-up to hosting the Olympics in 2024, first-time WNBA All-Star Dominique Malonga is excited to show how talented France has become.
"We just play against the best in the world, and naturally, it makes us part of the best in the world," Malonga told Black Rosie Media Sunday.
"Evolving in this league puts some value on our names, and I think it helps us making the national team. But I think it's still something you need to earn. It's not something that's going to be given to you," she added.
Les Bleues are coming off two consecutive top-three Olympic finishes (Bronze in 2020, silver in 2024) and have a roster full of dazzling players taking the WNBA by storm. The "difference" Malonga was referring to was a chase for more history.
"I think we can go for something really big, something that we haven't done before. And I think we really have the group. Even if we don't know who's going to be the 12, I think we have 15 to 20 players that are able to do something big now," Malonga said.
France has never won a World Cup. The only time Les Bleues have stood on the podium was to claim bronze in 2014 in Istanbul. A title in Berlin would be the greatest achievement in the program's history. Malonga knows that.
That is the posture of a team that believes it belongs — and one that has harnessed the goodwill and momentum gained two years ago in the Olympic gold medal game.
Les Bleues: A Federation on the Rise
France finished one point from Olympic gold in 2024. As Malonga said, they have depth. They have WNBA-ready talent sharpened by the best competition in the world for the past four months.
What they do not have, less than three weeks from Berlin, is a roster.
Johannes described the French group as one with shared history that can adapt. "We know each other. We've been playing together since a long time now," she said last week.
Still, cohesiveness built over years still needs time to activate. Two days of practice is not nothing. The question is whether it — and the time players sacrificed away from the WNBA ahead of Paris 2024 — will be enough to win another medal in international competition.
The stakes could not be higher. France is in Group B alongside Hungary, Korea, and Nigeria — a navigable path to the knockout rounds. If Les Bleues advance as expected, they will face the winners of Group A in the quarterfinals, with USA, Australia, and China on the other side of the bracket until the semifinals at the earliest.
And should France win the World Cup, they would earn automatic qualification for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles — the first direct Olympic berth the program has ever earned through a World Cup, bypassing the 2027 EuroBasket qualification gauntlet entirely.
It would also mean that, somewhere along the way, they defeated the United States — two years after coming within one point of doing exactly that in Paris.
For all of these reasons, France is one of the most compelling teams in the field. Whether the federation treats them that way before September 4 is a different story.
First time WNBA All-Star Starter Williams, who sat out the 2024 WNBA season rather than navigate the prioritization rule, said it best after France's final press conference at the Paris Olympics.
"What we've done was truly inspirational. I hope this will help basketball in France and in Europe grow."
I'd arguer it already has.
The interview with Dominique Malonga was conducted by Roberta F. Rodrigues for Black Rosie Media. Quotes from Pauline Astier, Marine Fauthoux, and Marine Johannes were provided by Brian Fleurantin. Erica L. Ayala provided original quotes from the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
Comments