Women’s Wrestling on TV in 2026

Welcome to year number six of what was supposed to be little project that has grown into something much bigger! I started looking at this back in 2021 because for a few weeks in a row things looked really bleak on Smackdown, like so little time for women’s wrestling that if you blinked you missed it.  Or at least it felt that way, and that led me to start tracking just how much women’s wrestling on TV we were getting.  There have been ups and downs along the way but 2025 gave us a huge breakthrough on every major show, with all time high numbers for ring time and individual match time on every show (RAW, Smackdown, NXT, TNA, and AEW Dynamite). So now in 2026 the big question are we going to continue to move forward or move back? 2025 saw a couple of show format changes – RAW settled in at a two and half hour broadcast length on Netflix and Smackdown went to three hours for half the year before reverting back to it’s usual two hours from July on. In 2026 that is how things are going once again so there’s some consistency from year to year once again.  

For anyone new, here’s exactly what I’m measuring:

• Number of matches per week (I do not count intergender and mixed tag matches as women’s matches, but do count them for total ring time and participation)
• Number of women wrestling per week
• Total ring time per week
• Average match time (not counting intergender or mixed tag matches)
• Number of main events this year (main events are matches that close the show, not just the last match on the show)
• Number of women with at least 10 matches on one show in a year (RAW, Smackdown, etc)

The last two aren’t reflected here right now but once there have been enough shows to measure them they will be.

For a look at last year check out Women’s Wrestling on TV in 2025.

Monday Night RAW

• Matches per week: 1.5 (2025 final number: 1.60)
• Women wrestling per week: 5.5 (2025 final number: 4.04)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 18:31 (2025 final number: 17:14)
• Average Match Time: 12:20 (2025 final number: 10:25)

A month in RAW is running a little bit ahead of 2025, and there’s a very easy explanation. The women’s tag team titles are being chased by six different teams featuring a lot of the roster’s biggest names, which means more tag team matches, which means more women wrestling every week and more ring time to accommodate all of the participants. That’s really it in a nutshell and the only real question is how long they keep this up with the tag division.

Smackdown

• Matches per week: 1.8 (2025 final number: 1.92)
• Women wrestling per week: 6.4 (2025 final number: 5.5)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 14:01 (2025 final number: 19:20)
• Average match time: 7:47 (2025 final number: 10:03)

Smackdown has more women wrestling per week for the same reason that RAW does – the tag team title situation. But the average total ring time and match times are both down because of some short matches featuring champion Jade Cargill and her soon to be challenger Jordynne Grace. Jade isn’t a long match wrestler so you can expect these averages to stay behind last year as long as she’s champ and is wrestling regularly on TV. That’s not a dis, that’s just the reality.

NXT

• Matches per week: 1.75 (2025 final number :2.19)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.5 (2025 final number: 6.44)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 18:07 (2025 final number: 19:50)
• Average match time: 10:21 (2025 final number: 8:33)

After years of running laps around everyone NXT has finally started to fall back to the pack. I think that’s largely because several the women who enabled them to work more matches on TV last year – Roxanne Perez, Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer, and Jordynne Grace – are now on the main roster, with Sol Ruca looking like she’s being prepped to move up soon also. They also appear to be figuring out just how to center things around recent arrivals like Kendall Grey and Blake Monroe. Once things settle and they’re ready to roll then maybe it’ll pick up. 2025 may very well have been the crescendo to what was building since NXT 2.0 – the new women brought in between 2022 and 2023 had enough experience to work longer, and then you sprinkle some vets and main roster talent and you had the perfect storm to max out on everything. On one positive note the average match time is up so all is not lost. But right now it’s looking like a bit of a rebuilding year.

Dynamite

• Matches per week: 1 (2025 final number: 1.08)
• Women wrestling per week: 3.5 (2025 final number: 3.69)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 10:30 (2025 final number: 13:18)
• Average match time: 10:30 (2025 final number: 11:37)

Dynamite stayed firmly entrenched in it’s one match a week habit. The ring time is down a little bit so far, but that’s to be expected when they haven’t a week with a second match yet or even a mixed tag match to bump up the total ring time.

TNA

• Matches per week: 1.2 (2025 final number: 1.57)
• Women wrestling per week: 3.6 (2025 final number: 5.68)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 7:40 (2025 final number: 12:17)
• Average match time: 6:24 (2025 final number: 7:20)

TNA so far is down across the board. They took a big roster hit when Masha Slamavich got released due to a, ahem, off the field matter as she was entrenched as the backbone of the division. So now they are once again rebuilding after a solid 2025.

2026 one month takeaways

NXT and TNA are rebuilding. Raw and Smackdown have been focusing more time and energy on tag teams than usual. Dynamite is Dynamite – and that’s much better than from where they started in 2019 and 2021, but they aren’t looking like they’re moving the ball any further forward right now after two years of major progress. After one month this is what the rankings look like:

1. Smackdown (1.8, 6.4, 14:01 total ring time)
2. RAW (1.5 matches, 5.5 women wrestling, 18:31)
3. NXT (1.75, 4.5, 18:07)
4. AEW Dynamite (1.1, 3.5, 10:30)
5. TNA (1.2, 3.6, 7:40)

Going forward the big questions are:

1. How much longer is the tag team focus on RAW and Smackdown going to continue?
2. Who else is going up from NXT and how will that shape it’s programming?
3. Can TNA settle on a solid rotation that allows them to expand on things?

January is an unpredictable month in that sometimes the companies just roll over what they were doing the previous year and sometimes they’re in kind of a haze while they’re figuring what direction to go in. Raw, Smackdown, and Dynamite have chosen the former while NXT and TNA are doing the latter.