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.  Now if you’re asking ‘what about promos, backstage segments, etc.?’ the answer is that matches matter and the men never go without matches on TV or in their storylines.

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 (for this study 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 one isn’t reflected here right now but once there have been enough shows to measure them it will be.

I do have one totally subjective category, Weekly Wins.  A Weekly Win is for the show that I felt had the best combination of matches, number of women wrestling, time, and card placement in a week

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

All numbers are for matches completed as of May 4, 2026.

Monday Night RAW

• Matches per week: 1.5 (2025 final number: 1.60)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.5 (2025 final number: 4.04)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 16:55 (2025 final number: 17:14)
• Average Match Time: 11:16 (2025 final number: 10:25)
• Main Events: 0
• Weekly wins: 0

RAW started off with a bang on January 5: 3 matches, two of them for titles, and two title changes. Things took a dip in February when most of the tag team action shifted to Smackdown and RAW was left with Elimination Chamber qualifying matches and not much else. And then on the first Monday in March they bottomed out and put up a goose egg.  There has been a real sign for optimism lately, though; after the first four weeks of March were pedestrian the next five weeks were a real turnaround to the tune of 2 matches, 5.6 women wrestling and 20:42 of total ring time.   In other words, RAW has been streaky so far this year. From January 12 through March 9 it was pretty bad (1.1, 3.9, 14:26) then from March 16 to April 27 it was great (2, 5.4, 19:39) but on May 5 they put up another goose egg. Year to year they are in a virtual tie in the per week categories but haven’t had a women’s match in the main event yet, which is a concern and doesn’t look to be changing any time soon.

Smackdown

• Matches per week: 2.17 (2025 final number: 1.92)
• Women wrestling per week: 6.5 (2025 final number: 5.5)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 19:20 (2025 final number: 19:20)
• Average match time: 8:55 (2025 final number: 10:03)
• Main Events: 1
• Women with 10 matches: 3
• Weekly wins: 9

Smackdown has had more matches and more women wrestling per week because of the tag team title situation, and as a result are the leaders in the clubhouse for matches, women wrestling and total ring time per week by a wide margin so far, topped off by a 4 week stretch in February where they averaged a half hour of total ring time. The big question now as we move on from WrestleMania is how long will this continue?  Thankfully the call up of Fatal Influence from NXT has brought another team to the yard and will help maintain that presence. There is one concerning number, and that is main events.  So far there’s only been one women’s main event all year, and that came on April 10 at a point where any men’s options had been exhausted already.  (The Bellas vs Nia Jax and Lash Legend was the final match on March 20 but it did not close the show.)  With a return to the two hour format looming we should expect the numbers to drop as they did when the same thing happened last year but once again the three hour Smackdown has held a new benchmark for women’s wrestling on television.

NXT

• Matches per week: 1.94 (2025 final number: 2.19)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.71 (2025 final number: 6.44)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 18:22 (2025 final number: 19:50)
• Average match time: 9:07 (2025 final number: 8:33)
• Main Events: 6
• Weekly wins: 6

After years of running laps around everyone NXT has finally come back to the pack.  I think that’s largely because several of the women who enabled them to work more and longer matches on TV last year – Roxanne Perez, Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer, and Jordynne Grace – are now on the main roster along with new callups Sol Ruca, Blake Monroe and Fatal Influence. That’s nine major players moving on in less than two years. They appear to be figuring out how to center things around recent arrivals like Kendall Grey and Kali Armstrong backing up some women who are now veterans like Kelani Jordan, Jaida Parker and Tatum Paxley.  The other thing bringing down some of the numbers is the Speed Championship – on the one hand it gives more of the women a thing to compete for but the designed short match times means the time per match average for the show and the total ring time is going to come down. 2024 and 2025 really were a 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 in some vets and main roster talent and you had the perfect storm to max out on everything. So now it’s time rebuild and I expect things to pick back as the year comes to a close. In the meantime the one thing NXT continues to do better than anyone is put women in the main event.  Even with everything else down they are still running laps around the other shows in that department, with more (6) than everyone else combined.

Dynamite

• Matches per week: 1.18 (2025 final number: 1.08)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.00 (2025 final number: 3.67)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 12:01 (2025 final number: 13:18)
• Average match time: 9:30 (2025 final number: 11:37)
• Main Events: 1
• Weekly wins: 3

Dynamite has stayed firmly entrenched in it’s one match a week habit, although they have had a second match 3 times already this year whereas last year it took them until September to get there. The ring time is down so far, but that’s to be expected when they’ve only had three weeks with a second match to bump up the total ring time. The women’s tag team titles have helped with the number of women wrestling per week, so there’s one big positive. It looks to me like a lot is hinging on Mercedes Mone to return to television; the women averaged four more minutes of total ring time whenever she wrestled on TV in 2025 so I imagine the gap between then and now will close pretty quickly when she’s back.

TNA

• Matches per week: 1.41 (2025 final number: 1.57)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.06 (2025 final number: 5.68)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 11:24 (2025 final number: 12:17)
• Average match time: 7:21 (2025 final number: 7:20)
• Main Events: 2
• Weekly wins: 4

TNA so far is down across the board in most categories. 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. As of right now there is no ace of the division to anchor things from week to week, For all intents and purposes they are rebuilding after a solid 2025.

2026 four month takeaways

NXT and TNA are rebuilding. RAW is a show of streaks, but has come as close to passing NXT as it could since 2022. Smackdown has been focusing more time and energy on tag teams than usual, and it’s worked. Dynamite is Dynamite –  much better than from where they started in 2019, but they aren’t looking like they’re moving the ball any further forward right now after two years of major progress. After two months this is what the rankings look like:

1. Smackdown (2.2 matches, 6.5 women wrestling, 19:25 total ring time)
2. NXT (1.9, 4.7, 18:22)
3. RAW (1.5, 4.5 ,16:55)
4. AEW Dynamite (1.2, 4.0, 12:01 and TNA (1.4, 3.9, 11:34)

Going forward the big questions are:

1. How much longer is the tag team focus on RAW and Smackdown going to continue?
2. How long will it take for the new nucleus on NXT to shape it’s programming?
3. Can TNA settle on a solid rotation that allows them to build?
4. How much will Dynamite’s ring time go back up when Mercedes Mone returns?

2025 was so good that there was nowhere to go but down, but there are a few signs that can’t just be handwaved to a reversion to the mean.  In 2026 there is no excuse for anyone with a two hour wrestling show to have zero women’s matches any week out of the year, which has already happened twice on RAW and once on TNA.  The rosters are too big and too talented.  To my knowledge there’s been one week of TV in the entire time I’ve covered this where there have been zero men’s matches on anyone’s show (an advertised ladies night on NXT back in 2022), even weeks where creative is cooked coming off a PLE.  The lack of main events is also concerning; RAW has zero far while Smackdown had their first and so far only one on April 10.  In 2025 they’d both had a couple by this point, and all the other shows except NXT and TNA are behind last year’s pace of booking women in main events. Again, there’s too much depth and too great of talent for this to be going on. Do better, folks.