Holly Winterburn becomes first homegrown British guard to make WNBA
Holly Winterburn has made history.
The 25-year-old from Northampton was named to the Atlanta Dream’s 12-player opening night roster on Thursday, becoming the first British homegrown guard to make a WNBA team.
“A little girl’s dream turned into reality,” Winterburn posted on Instagram. “Beyond grateful. The work starts now.”
Winterburn arrived in Atlanta off the back of a title-winning season in Greece with Athinaikos, where she helped the club lift the Greek Cup and the A1 League and reach a EuroCup Women final. She earned her spot under head coach Karl Smesko alongside Angel Reese, Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray and Brionna Jones, on a team coming off a 30-win, franchise-record 2025 campaign.
Winterburn’s first club was Northants Basketball, the local programme where most kids in the area get their first taste of the sport. From there she moved through Charnwood and the Leicester Riders pathway before earning a scholarship to Oregon in 2019.
After one season with the Ducks she came home, playing WBBL with Leicester Riders before moving to London Lions, where in April 2024 she was part of the squad that beat Beşiktaş to win the FIBA EuroCup Women, the first European trophy in the history of British basketball.
A training camp deal with Atlanta followed in February 2025, but a pre-camp injury ruled her out of the entire season before it began. She went to Greece, played the best basketball of her career, and forced her way back into Atlanta’s plans for 2026.
Winterburn was named MVP of the inaugural U19 Women’s Hoopsfix All-Star Classic in 2019, the first time the showcase had featured a women’s game. Six years on, she is on a WNBA roster.
Temi Fagbenle has been the standard bearer for British women in the WNBA, winning a championship with the Minnesota Lynx in 2017 and recently signing a reported $1m deal with the Toronto Tempo. Kristine Anigwe and Karlie Samuelson have also held WNBA contracts. But those players are post players, dual nationals, or were developed primarily inside the American system.
Winterburn is the first guard. She is also the first who came up almost entirely through the British pathway, a junior club programme to a national league side to a single year of NCAA basketball before returning home, then earning her way to the WNBA via Europe.
“For British basketball, it’s always like, we have so much potential, we have the talent, but it never really goes anywhere,” Winterburn said in her first media availability with the Dream this week.
“Temi’s the pioneer right now. But having people here doing it and proving that we can do it, it’s not just potential, I think that’s important for the next generation.”
Atlanta open the regular season on Saturday in Minnesota.
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