As if reborn from the ashes, the Portland Fire are back.
Portland’s forthcoming WNBA expansion team, set to begin play in summer 2026, unveiled its name and logo Tuesday morning. The Fire will call the Moda Center home with new branding under the ownership of RAJ Sports — the same group led by Lisa Bhathal Merage which purchased the Portland Thorns in 2024.
Fire was Portland’s name during its previous WNBA run from 2000-02.
The Fire logo features a rose engulfed in red flames with accents and includes the shape of the Moda Center. Several other brand logos pay homage to the shape of Portland’s bridges along with Mt. Hood.
The color palette will be “Fire Red,” brown, blue, and pink, according to the team’s press release. Uniform designs will be released at a later date.
“That rose icon represents the fire that burns in the passion of this city,” Portland Fire interim president Clare Hamill told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “It is a clear nod to the Rose City, and all the beauty and strength that comes with that. The petals begin as flames and reach high.”
At the groundbreaking for the Thorns’ and Fire’s joint training facility in Hillsboro in April, Bhathal Merage said the team hit several roadblocks in choosing a name for the WNBA franchise. It faced difficulty with intellectual property and trademarks and was repeatedly told no by the league, she said.
The team ended up choosing Fire and said it consulted the community throughout the process, whether on social media or elsewhere.
“I feel like we’ve landed in exactly the right place for Portland and for the fans,” Hamill said. “There was social outreach, and local communities like the Sports Bra sent their own questionnaire out. They had a lot of input and a lot of ideas. Every single Oregonian and Portlander, including myself, had an opinion about what the name should be.
“Hopefully when everybody sees the brand and the different dimensions that go into the storytelling, they will feel just as good about it as we do.”
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There has been backlash from some fans online over the possibility of the Fire returning as the team’s name. The franchise believes the name is representative of Portland’s sports culture and collective spirit, and did not express concern about fans conflating it with the wildfires raging yearly in Oregon or stereotypes about Portland perpetuated by the national media.
The Fire are approaching 11,000 season ticket deposits, on pace to surpass the WNBA record according to the team’s release.
The branding was designed by the local creative agency Adopt — co-founded by David Creech, a former Nike vice president who led design for Jordan Brand, among other creative endeavors. Creech crossed paths with Hamill repeatedly at Nike in Hamill’s more than four decades working in executive and leadership roles for the sportswear giant.
“When you think about branding a team and a franchise for a city, you’re thinking about what everybody looks to Portland for. What is Portland?” Hamill said. “I think what is powerful about the name and the branding is how much it speaks to the unity in Portland, which we speak to with the bridges. There is a fierce individuality in Portland, and there is a collective pride. … This logo taps into the strengths and the fire you get with things around sports.”
With the 2025 WNBA season approaching the All-Star break, The Fire have yet to hire a general manager. Hamill currently serves in the president role on an interim basis after the firing of initial team president Inky Son. The Portland team name announcement came months after the Toronto Tempo revealed its name and branding.
That announcement was seen and heard first by East Coast viewers of Good Morning America on ABC, with local station KATU reporting from outside The Sports Bra, Portland’s iconic women’s sports bar, at 5:50 a.m. Tuesday morning. Cheers could be heard from inside the building, but local viewers couldn’t see the celebration live.
The Fire are forging ahead and focused on the future, Hamill said. Next summer will be here before Portland basketball fans know it.
“There is a narrative out there that we aren’t very far along, or that we’re behind, which is completely not true,” she said. “We do need to pick up the pace on some things, and we are, but everybody is going to be blown away when they see how much progress has been made.”
— Ryan Clarke covers the Oregon State Beavers for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at RClarke@Oregonian.com or on Twitter/X: @RyanTClarke. Find him on Bluesky: @ryantclarke.bsky.social.
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