Every year-end “athletes to watch” list runs the risk of just repeating whoever already won the most trophies. This one tries to do something slightly different — a mix of established dominance, athletes on a genuine upward trajectory, and a couple of names who could have a defining year if the timing breaks right heading into 2027. Women’s sports has changed shape faster in the last few years than in the previous two decades combined, and the twenty-five names below are a reasonable cross-section of exactly how that shift is playing out across six very different sports.
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How This List Was Put Together
No single stat decided who made this list. Some names here are already the best in their sport and simply show no signs of slowing down. Others are earlier in their careers, but on a trajectory that suggests 2027 could be the year everything clicks into a genuinely defining season. A few are included as much for their cultural impact — growing a sport’s audience, changing how it gets talked about — as for pure competitive results, because that kind of influence tends to compound just as much as trophies do.
Golf
Jeeno Thitikul
Jeeno Thitikul turned professional as a teenager and has spent every season since proving that early hype wasn’t a fluke. She won a professional tournament as a 14-year-old amateur, years before most future tour pros have even qualified for a national junior event, and has carried that early precocity into a career built on precision rather than power. That low-variance formula keeps producing wins at a pace few of her rivals can match heading into 2027, backed by extended stretches near the top of the Rolex World Rankings.
Minjee Lee
Minjee Lee rarely misses a cut, and in a sport where consistency is genuinely rare, that reliability keeps compounding into real major championship contention year after year. Her career earnings rank among the highest of any active LPGA player, built almost entirely on steady, error-averse golf rather than any single career-defining hot streak. She’s the kind of player whose name you expect to see on the leaderboard by Sunday almost by default.
Lilia Vu
Lilia Vu already has a major championship on her résumé and looks like a player still climbing rather than one who’s peaked. Her ball-striking numbers put her among the tour’s most complete players, and unlike golfers who win a single major and plateau, her season-to-season progression suggests the breakthrough was a floor, not a ceiling. There’s little reason to think 2027 slows that down.
Rose Zhang
Rose Zhang turned professional with amateur-era hype that would have crushed a lot of young players, and she’s mostly backed it up since, winning in her professional debut and continuing to add wins at a pace matching the expectations that followed her out of college golf. Her transition from can’t-miss prospect to genuine tour winner has been smoother than most comparable career arcs in recent memory.
Charley Hull
Charley Hull remains one of the tour’s most naturally gifted ball-strikers, the kind of player whose swing draws admiration from rivals even on weeks the results don’t fully cooperate. She turned professional as a teenager and has spent well over a decade near the top of women’s golf without ever quite landing the signature major win her talent level suggests is overdue. She has the game to get there in 2027.
Football
Ada Hegerberg
Ada Hegerberg remains one of the most clinical finishers in the women’s game well into a career that’s already produced the inaugural Ballon d’Or Féminin and years of dominant club form at one of Europe’s most successful teams. Her multi-year standoff with the Norwegian federation over equal treatment, during which she stepped away from international duty entirely, remains one of the most significant individual protests in the sport’s history. Her return to full international duty only adds another tournament stage where she could keep adding to that legacy.
Lauren James
Lauren James is the kind of individual talent capable of deciding matches completely on her own, the sort of skillset that makes broadcasters build entire pre-match previews around one player. She has represented both Chelsea and the England national team at a level well beyond her years, and she’s still early enough in her prime that her ceiling hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.
Aitana Bonmatí
Aitana Bonmatí has become the sport’s standout midfielder, combining technical control with a work rate that lets her dictate matches from deep rather than relying purely on individual flair. Multiple Ballon d’Or wins in quick succession have cemented her as arguably the most complete midfielder in the current women’s game, and her trophy case keeps growing at a rate that puts her firmly in the conversation for the best player of her generation.
Alexia Putellas
Alexia Putellas has already won the sport’s highest individual honor multiple times, and the consistency behind those wins — not just isolated great seasons — is what makes another big year genuinely likely rather than just possible. Her recovery from a serious knee injury, and the way she returned to top-level form afterward, only reinforced her reputation as one of the most complete players of her era.
Chloe Kelly
Chloe Kelly turned one iconic tournament-winning moment into a launching pad for a rapidly rising profile, and her performances since have shown that moment wasn’t a one-off. She’s become exactly the kind of big-occasion player teams want available off the bench or in the starting eleven, with a knack for producing decisive moments when matches are tightest.
Athletics
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone keeps lowering her own 400m hurdles world record on what’s started to feel like a scheduled basis rather than a surprise. She made her first Olympic team as a sixteen-year-old high schooler and has spent the years since compressing a record-breaking timeline that historically took entire generations of hurdlers to move by fractions of a second. Few athletes in any event have rewritten their own event’s ceiling this fast.
Faith Kipyegon
Faith Kipyegon is still the runner every 1500m field has to build a race plan around, a reputation built over close to a decade of championship-level consistency and multiple Olympic gold medals. Her comeback after motherhood, returning to win global titles at a level most athletes never reach even once, only added to a legacy that already ranked among the greatest in middle-distance history.
Sha’Carri Richardson
Sha’Carri Richardson combines genuine championship-level speed with a personality and public profile that’s made her one of track and field’s few true crossover stars. Her bold personal style and outspoken interviews have translated sprint success into mainstream visibility that most athletics stars, regardless of results, never achieve. That combination of results and reach keeps her relevant even in years without a global championship on the calendar.
Julien Alfred
Julien Alfred is part of the generation with a genuine shot at closing in on some of the sport’s oldest and most untouchable sprinting records. Her rise has been rapid enough that ruling out a historic performance in the next couple of seasons would be premature, and she’s already delivered breakthrough championship results well ahead of the typical development timeline for elite sprinters.
Alysha Newman
Alysha Newman stays consistently among the world’s best in an event that rewards year-round technical precision over flashes of individual brilliance. That steadiness has kept her in medal contention across multiple major championship cycles, and her candid, personality-driven public presence has helped raise the profile of an event that rarely produces mainstream social media stars.
Maria Roberta Gherca
Maria Roberta Gherca is part of a deepening pole vault field that keeps pushing the event’s overall standard higher, season after season. A crowded, competitive field at the top is exactly the kind of environment that tends to produce breakthrough years, and her consistent presence near the top of major competitions suggests she’s close to that next step.
Tennis
Aryna Sabalenka
Aryna Sabalenka is one of the most powerful hitters in the women’s game, capable of ending points in a way few of her rivals can match. That power, paired with steadily improving consistency and mental composure in tight matches, has kept her in the thick of every major title race for several seasons running, holding down a place at or near the top of the world rankings.
Coco Gauff
Coco Gauff is already a Grand Slam champion despite still being one of the younger names near the top of the rankings, which is exactly the kind of early-career marker that tends to precede an even bigger peak. She turned professional as a young teenager amid enormous hype and has largely matched it, and her ceiling still looks well above where she’s currently playing.
Cricket
Shafali Verma
Shafali Verma is still just entering her prime years after becoming India’s youngest-ever T20I player at fifteen. The WPL has given her the repetition international cricket alone couldn’t, dozens of high-pressure innings a year instead of a handful at ICC events, and the technical rough edges from her early career keep smoothing out season by season.
Smriti Mandhana
Smriti Mandhana has been one of the WPL’s defining faces since the league’s very first auction, where she became the most expensive player in the inaugural cycle. Her consistency at the top of the order has made her one of Indian women’s cricket’s most bankable performers heading into another season.
Other Sports
Caitlin Clark (Basketball)
Caitlin Clark arrived in the WNBA with a college fanbase that transferred almost intact, having already become the all-time leading scorer in NCAA history for both men’s and women’s basketball. Her impact on the league’s broader viewership numbers shows no sign of fading as she settles further into the professional game.
Olivia Dunne (Gymnastics)
Olivia Dunne remains one of the biggest crossover names to come out of college sports’ name-image-likeness era, turning a gymnastics career into a personal brand and one of the largest social media followings of any collegiate athlete in any sport, male or female.
Eileen Gu (Freestyle Skiing)
Eileen Gu is a genuine global crossover star heading toward her next Winter Games cycle, with a following that spans multiple countries in a way winter sports athletes rarely achieve. Freestyle skiing seldom produces mainstream crossover stars; Gu has become the clear exception.
Simone Biles (Gymnastics)
Simone Biles is still redefining what’s technically possible in the sport well past the age most elite gymnasts retire, a combination of longevity and difficulty that’s never really been matched in the event’s history. Several skills across multiple apparatus now carry her name in the sport’s official code of points, a distinction very few gymnasts of any era have earned.
Jutta Leerdam (Speed Skating)
Jutta Leerdam combines genuine speed skating dominance with a mainstream public profile the sport rarely produces, helping bring broader attention to an event that usually only trends during Winter Olympic years. Her results on the ice have stayed strong even as her off-ice profile has grown substantially.
Katie Ledecky (Swimming)
Katie Ledecky is arguably the most dominant distance freestyler of any era, male or female, with a record-breaking résumé that’s stayed remarkably consistent across multiple Olympic cycles rather than peaking once and fading. Her world records in the middle- and long-distance freestyle events have proven far more durable than most swimming marks typically are.
Sunisa Lee (Gymnastics)
Sunisa Lee is an Olympic all-around champion still adding to her international medal count, competing in an event where the margin between gold and missing the podium entirely is often a fraction of a point. Her technical precision on the uneven bars in particular remains among the best in the world.
Ilona Maher (Rugby)
Ilona Maher turned rugby sevens into must-watch social content without sacrificing on-field results, proving that a niche Olympic sport can build a mainstream audience when the right personality meets genuine athletic credibility. Her crossover appeal has done more for U.S. rugby’s visibility than a decade of results alone managed to achieve.
Twenty-five names, six sports, and one common thread: none of them are coasting on reputation alone. Every athlete on this list is still adding to their case heading into 2027, which is really the only qualification that matters for a watch list like this one. Some will be chasing their first major title, others will be defending ground at the very top of their sport, and a few could end up having the kind of breakthrough year that gets this exact list rewritten completely by the time 2028 rolls around.
What ties all six sports together on this list isn’t just talent — it’s timing. Golf, football, athletics, tennis, cricket, and this year’s crop of Olympic and Olympic-adjacent sports are all in the middle of genuine growth periods for their women’s divisions, with broadcast deals, sponsorship dollars, and general audience attention all climbing at the same time. That’s a very different environment than the one most of the older names on this list turned professional into, and it means the athletes coming up behind them are inheriting infrastructure, prize money, and visibility their predecessors had to fight for one season at a time. Watching this specific group over the next year isn’t just about who wins what. It’s a reasonably direct read on how fast that broader shift keeps moving.