The Fire is back in Portland: Behind the brand of the city’s new WNBA franchise

The WNBA is headed to Oregon in 2026—or should we say, headed back?

The league had a team that played in Portland in its early days, from 2000 to 2002, and starting next season, the city will get an expansion team with the same name: the Portland Fire. The name and new branding debuted on Tuesday, just ahead of WNBA All-Star Weekend.

While the name is the same, other aspects of the branding, like the visuals, are fresh, part of an effort to highlight the Fire’s roots while also creating a modern identity to help represent the city and attract new fans, according to Clare Hamill, a former Nike exec who was recently named interim president of the Fire.

“When I walked in the first day, I saw all the branding and the creative, and knowing Portland like I know it, it just feels right,” Hamill told Marketing Brew. “I think the depth of bringing Portland and all the strength of Portland into the new branding and the new logo, and then tapping into that heritage, it’s going to be fantastic.”

Up in flames

The Fire tapped Portland-based branding and creative agency Adopt to help develop its brand identity, including the logos and colors. The name had already been decided when Adopt joined the project, co-founder David Creech said, but there was still the task of telling the story of the team and its history visually.

One of the starting points for Creech and his team was to “construct a bespoke typography that connects” to Portland, he said, and the Fire’s logos, much like the visuals for many other teams, are packed with references to its home city. The 12 bridges within Portland city limits are represented in the wordmark, according to Hamill, and there’s also a flaming rose in the team’s primary icon and global logo, a reference to Portland’s nickname, “Rose City.”

The typography is designed to serve as a nod to the architecture of the Moda Center, which the Fire will share with the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers. The color palette, which includes red, brown, pink, and a “glacial blue” that’s meant to invoke the visual of Mount Hood, the highest peak in Oregon and an iconic part of the Portland skyline, contributes to a more modern feel for the team, Hamill said. There’s also a reference to the peak in the Fire’s “P” logo, Creech said.

Some of the visual cues, like the bridges and the Moda Center, aren’t glaringly obvious—a purposeful choice, according to Creech.

“It’s that art and science of being literal and being artful, and I think we always choose the lens of artful, because when you do that with the right story, it becomes very, very unique for the beholder,” he said. “We wanted to make sure we created an identity that didn't look like other things within Portland, that felt very unique and special for the team.”

To introduce the brand to the city, the Fire is hosting a party at the Moda Center on Tuesday with a DJ, food trucks, merch for sale, and other activities, Hamill said. The team’s website is also set to go live today, she said.

Hamill’s team has been leaning into social media and out-of-home ads to help spread the word, as well as direct mail and email campaigns for people who are already in the team’s database, she added. The Fire announced they had reached over 10,000 season-ticket deposits at the end of June, less than a year after the expansion team was announced.

Moda Center to epicenter

The Fire won’t be under the same ownership as the Trail Blazers, but Hamill said she expects “there’ll be a lot of fun synergy” between the two teams. Hamill expects there to be some crossover with Trail Blazers fans, along with the opportunity to attract new basketball fans, much like the Golden State Valkyries, another WNBA expansion team that is currently playing its first season in the league.

“We will definitely have some very big audiences that maybe haven't gone to Blazer games that want to tap into the inspiration of the W and the inclusivity of this league and the joy in the culture,” she said. “If you think about that 25–35 age group and all that creative community here, they’re crazy about the W.”

The W isn’t the only women’s sports league represented in Portland, and the Fire is also collaborating closely with the NWSL’s Portland Thorns, Hamill told us. Both teams are owned by investment group RAJ Sports, and Hamill said they’re already working together on a summit focused on women’s sports that will take place after All-Star Weekend, where the Fire will have a presence.

“The bigger concept for the family and for this team is to turn Portland into the global epicenter of women's sports,” Hamill said. “This is already a town where women's sports, and sports, is deep in culture…and so there's a lot of power in partnering with the Thorns, a lot of power in how we show up in the community together.”

With just under a year to go until the Fire tips off its first season in the W, the team already has three founding sponsors on board: enterprise video platform Brandlive, First Tech Federal Credit Union, and Alaska Airlines. Its jersey designs will be revealed at a later date, but those, along with a handful of other story and product rollouts tied to key moments like the expansion draft, are all in the works, Hamill said.

“We'll be pretty deeply tied into a lot of great events and activities, but most importantly, [we’ll be] just getting as deeply connected with the communities and fans as we can possibly be, keeping that at the center as we move towards that first game,” she said.