Photo Credit: USA Basketball/Instagram
By: Jennifer Portee
9/14/2026
France had the building rocking early, burying eight 3-pointers and turning a 13-0 second-quarter run into a 31-17 lead. For a stretch, the Americans looked defeated. Passes were late. Defensive switches were off. France was playing with the kind of freedom that makes an underdog dangerous in a final.
Then Caitlin Clark drilled a 3 with three seconds left in the half, trimming the deficit to 45-43.
The United States came out of halftime with its veterans in control and never gave the lead back, beating France 97-79 on Sunday at Berlin Arena to win a fifth straight FIBA Women’s World Cup and a record 12th overall.
Breanna Stewart did what she has done throughout the tournament: settled the game down, owned the glass and punished every opening France left behind. The tournament MVP finished with 22 points, 10 rebounds and four assists, becoming the third player to post a 20-point, 10-rebound game in a Women’s World Cup final.
Her fourth World Cup title ties Sue Bird for the most by an American. Stewart also left Berlin with a 26-0 career record in World Cup competition.
The turnaround began before halftime and carried well into the third quarter. The Americans put together a 15-2 run spanning the final 45 seconds of the second quarter and the opening minutes after the break. Stewart’s layup with 7:43 remaining in the third gave the U.S. a 49-47 lead, its first since the opening period. France never got it back.
That was the game. France had made the U.S. chase for 20 minutes, then ran into a team that finally started getting stops.
After allowing 45 points in the first half their highest total surrendered in any half of this tournament the Americans held France to 34 after the break. The offense followed. The U.S. scored 54 second-half points, got downhill more consistently and made France pay when help defenders collapsed.
Jackie Young was everywhere. She scored 13 of her 18 points in the first half, keeping the Americans close while France was rolling, then finished with six rebounds and five assists. Her four 3-pointers matched the Women’s World Cup final record.
Young became the first player to record at least 15 points, five rebounds and five assists in a World Cup final. She was also the only U.S. player to score at least 10 points in all six games, averaging 12.3 points across the tournament.
Kahleah Copper added 15 points. Clark and Chelsea Gray scored 12 apiece, with Gray adding five assists. The U.S. had five players in double figures, a familiar formula for a roster built around depth but rescued in this one by its poise.
Stewart and Young also joined rare company. Their combined production marked just the second time U.S. teammates each had at least 15 points and five rebounds in a Women’s World Cup final, following Lisa Leslie and Tamika Catchings in 2002. Young and Gray became the first teammate pair in a final to each post at least 10 points and five assists.
The win extended the Americans’ World Cup winning streak to 36 games. Their 12 gold medals are now double the total of the next-closest program, the Soviet Union, which won six.
Nine players on the roster celebrated their first World Cup titles: Aliyah Boston, Paige Bueckers, Sonia Citron, Clark, Napheesa Collier, Rhyne Howard, Kiki Iriafen, Angel Reese and Young. Copper, Gray, Stewart and Collier added another layer to their résumés as both Olympic and World Cup champions.
For Young, the gold completed a basketball checklist that no one else has matched: a high school state championship, NCAA title, WNBA championship, Olympic gold in both 5-on-5 and 3×3, and now a World Cup title.
Kara Lawson’s staff earned its own piece of history, too. Lawson became the first USA coach with head coaching gold medals in both 3×3 and 5-on-5 international basketball, adding the World Cup title to her 2020 Olympic 3×3 gold. Assistants Natalie Nakase, Nate Tibbetts and Stephanie White won their first World Cup gold medals.
France landed the first punch. The Americans absorbed it, found the matchups they wanted and turned the final into another U.S. championship celebration.