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.  

This year I have one big new development. I have added AEW Collision to the rankings. Why now? Well, for the first couple of years Collision was mostly a depository for developmental type matches with a few substantive ones thrown in but I noticed that there have been a lot of important matches on the show this year, including a lot of matches for the new women’s tag team titles but also some singles titles matches and a couple of special grudge matches. So since they are using the space to be serious about their women’s division it’s time to check and see how they’re doing. I found the results to be both pleasantly surprising and damning of their main show, Dynamite. You’ll see what I mean below.

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)

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.  I’m not including Collision here because their schedule is a little wacky in that they don’t always have one episode every week.

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

All numbers are for matches completed as of September 8, 2026.

Monday Night RAW

• Matches per week: 1.29 (2025 final number: 1.60)
• Women wrestling per week: 3.7 (2025 final number: 4.04)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 14:16 (2025 final number: 17:14)
• Average Match Time: 10:45 (2025 final number: 10:25)
• Main Events: 0
• Women with 10 matches: 5
• Weekly wins: 0

I think I must have woken somebody up when I said last week that “We might as well just call it Monday Night Dynamite now, because the make up is almost the same.” For the third time since April 27 and the twelfth time in 36 weeks RAW had more than one women’s match, and for the second time since that date they gave the women over 20 minutes of ring time. Is a change finally afoot? Well….not really. It’s just Money in the Bank qualifying time so for now and the next two weeks there’s a mandatory match already slotted in so the totals will be up. Then again the Queen of the Ring tournament had mandatory matches for two weeks and that didn’t help matters any so maybe some credit is due….nah, not really. September was great, but it was just one week, folks. Now as for the whole year so far?

RAW started off with a bang on January 5: three matches, two of them for titles, and two title changes. After that? Well….. From January 12 through March 9 it was bad (1.1 matches, 3.9 women wrestling, 14:26 total match time), and since April 27 it’s been down to 1.1, 2.8, and 11:09 – the kind of numbers we ridiculed Dynamite for. Save the stretch from March 16 to April 27 when they did great (2, 5.4, 19:39) it’s been a bad year – after 36 weeks they have more weeks (24) with one or zero women’s matches than they have with two or more (12). They have zero main events so far, and have had 3 weeks with zero women’s matches. In 2026.  In terms of pure roster usage this is the worst full year for RAW since 2017 and outside of those 8 good weeks, (January 5, March 16 to April 27, and September 7) they’re averaging 1.04/3.07/11:35. Yeah guys, this still stinks. The only thing saving it is that names involved are bigger ones than on some other shows.

Smackdown (3 hour)

Note: the two hour Smackdown follows. I thought it would be better to let the three hour Smackdown stand alone since it was so good this year.

• Matches per week: 2.23 (2025 final number: 1.92)
• Women wrestling per week: 6.81 (2025 final number: 5.5)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 20:47 (2025 final number: 19:20)
• Average match time: 9:19 (2025 final number: 10:03)
• Main Events: 2
• Women with 10 matches: 7
• Weekly wins: 14

Smackdown had more matches and more women wrestling per week in no small part due to the tag team division situation. Thanks to that division mostly living there and the call up of Fatal Influence as a trio, they are the leaders in the clubhouse this year for matches, women wrestling and total ring time per week by a wide margin, highlighted by a 4 week stretch in February where they averaged a half hour of total ring time. For the second year in a row the three hour Smackdown featured the most robust usage of a women’s roster on main roster WWE television ever. If you told anyone in June of 2015 that there would be a whole month where the women got a half hour of ring time every week they would have laughed in your face but look at them now. There was one disappointing number, and that is main events, only been two in six months.  (The Bellas vs Nia Jax and Lash Legend was the final match on March 20 but it did not close the show.) Looking at some of the things that they put in main event segments I can’t see why they couldn’t have spared a few more weeks for the ladies. 

Smackdown (2 hour)

• Matches per week: 1.9 (2025 final number: 1.31)
• Women wrestling per week: 5 (2025 final number: 3.58)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 12:31 (2025 final number: 10:33)
• Average match time: 6:35 (2025 final number: 7:46)
• Main Events: 1
• Weekly wins: 3

We’re six weeks in on the two hour Smackdown; right now they have chosen to pack more matches in than last year, that run shorter on average. Given that the working roster is bigger by almost 50% from 2025’s it’s probably for the best. Better to get more people on and figure out how to make the time work than to have the same 3 or 4 people on, albeit working longer matches, while a dozen are left to sit in catering watching. It’s a tradeoff, though. They have more matches and women wrestling per week than the other two hour shows save for Collision but all the other ones have longer matches and more total ring time so far. They did manage to get a main event in at the sixth week, a lot faster than either RAW or the 3 hour Smackdown did. That should continue given that the big programs on the men’s side feature promo heavy acts who are saving most of the ring work for PLEs.

NXT

• Matches per week: 1.83 (2025 final number: 2.19)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.5 (2025 final number: 6.44)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 17:54 (2025 final number: 19:50)
• Average match time: 9:15 (2025 final number: 8:33)
• Main Events: 14
• Women with 10 matches: 8
• Weekly wins: 10

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 through the end of last year – Roxanne Perez, Giulia, Stephanie Vaquer, and Jordynne Grace – are now on the main roster along with new callups Sol Ruca, Lash Legend, Blake Monroe, Fatal Influence, Tatum Paxley, and Lola Vice soon. That’s 12 major players moving on in just over a year. They’re now figuring out how to center things around recent arrivals like Kendall Grey, Lizzy Rain and Kali Armstrong backing up some women who are now veterans like Kelani Jordan and Jaida Parker.  Which means that who gets to go on and how much time they get is in a state of flux and is going to be less than we’re used to.  The other thing brought down the average ring time is the Speed Championship – on the one hand it gave more of the women a thing to compete for but the designed short match times meant the time per match average for the show and the total ring time decreased. We need to put this in perspective.  2024 and 2025 really were a crescendo to what had been 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 to rebuild but 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 (14) than almost everyone else combined.

Dynamite

• Matches per week: 1.17 (2025 final number: 1.08)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.34 (2025 final number: 3.67)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 12:30 (2025 final number: 13:18)
• Average match time: 10:19 (2025 final number: 11:37)
• Main Events: 2
• Women with 10 matches: 4
• Weekly wins: 4

Dynamite has stayed firmly entrenched in it’s one match a week habit, although they have had a second match six times already this year whereas last year it took them longer to get there. The ring time is down so far, but it’s getting close to last year’s average over the past couple of months. The women’s tag team titles have helped with the number of women wrestling per week, a big positive.

As I suspected, Mercedes Mone’s return to television has correlated with more ring time; since she got back the total ring time per week has jumped from 11 to 14 minutes. The lack of main events is glaring; only two so far after racking up nine for 2025, but I look for that to increase now that Mone is back.  She and Toni Storm are the real difference makers here.

Collision

• Matches per week: 1.87
• Women wrestling per week: 5.58
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 13:12
• Average match time: 6:54
• Main Events: 11
• Women with 10 matches: 2

Collision has been doing big things in 2026. Out of the six shows I’m tracking they are third in matches per week and second in women wrestling per week, and will likely be moving up once Smackdown is back to 2 hours. They’ve had more women’s main events than RAW, Smackdown, TNA and Dynamite combined, and as many women who’ve gotten up to 10 matches as TNA and Dynamite have altogether. And this is with some episodes only being an hour long and thus having half as much time to work with. In short they have been a legit challenger for the per capita crown that NXT had a stranglehold on for years. Collision has been the answer to the question ‘what if AEW booked the entire women’s division like it matters?’ At some point I’ll have to go back and look at how they did in 2025 because this has been a real revelation here. 

TNA

• Matches per week: 1.53 (2025 final number: 1.57)
• Women wrestling per week: 4.19 (2025 final number: 5.68)
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 12:38 (2025 final number: 12:17)
• Average match time: 7:32 (2025 final number: 7:20)
• Main Events: 5
• Women with 10 matches: 5
• Weekly wins: 8

TNA so far is down a bit from 2025. 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.  That being said they still have more TV main events for the women this year than they had for all of last year and as many as RAW, Smackdown and Dynamite combined.

2026 eight plus month takeaways

The 3 hour Smackdown has already won for the year and struck a good balance of usage across it’s entire roster. NXT and TNA are rebuilding. RAW is down horrendously from previous years. 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. Collision has been a pleasant surprise. After eight months this is what the rankings look like:

1. 3 Hour Smackdown (2.2 matches, 6.8 women wrestling, 20:47 total ring time)
2. NXT (1.8, 4.5, 17:54) & AEW Collision (1.9, 5.6, 13:12)
3. 2 Hour Smackdown (1.9, 5, 12:32)
4. TNA (1.5, 4.2, 12:38)
5. RAW (1.3, 3.7,14:16)
6. AEW Dynamite (1.2, 4.3, 12:30)

For the rest of the year the big questions are:

1. Will the 2 hour Smackdown keep up the pace?
2. Is RAW going to keep being Monday Dynamite?
3. How will NXT look as their new nucleus comes together?
4. Can TNA settle on a solid rotation that allows them to build?
5. Will Dynamite’s ring time stay up now that Mercedes Mone has returned?
6. Can Collision finish strong?

2025 was so good that there was nowhere to go but down, but there are a few red flags that can’t just be handwaved as 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, but it’s already happened three times on RAW and once on TNA.  The rosters are too big and too talented; even when you need to preserve people who are wrestling on a PLE/PPV in a few days every company has a deep well of women in reserve who can work those weeks.  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.  The lack of main events is also concerning; RAW has zero far while Smackdown has had only three.  Both of them and Dynamite 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.