Major League Soccer will be shifting its schedule to align the league’s schedule with the world’s top soccer leagues.
Starting in the Summer of 2027, MLS will adopt a summer-to-spring season format, the league announced Thursday. The calendar transition and the new regular season structure were approved during today’s MLS Board of Governors meeting in Palm Beach, Florida.
The league will also review potential adjustments to its MLS Cup Playoffs format as part of an ongoing evaluation process but has not yet finalized any changes. MLS is continuing to work with the MLS Players Association (MLSPA) to finalize agreement on a transition plan.
“The calendar shift is one of the most important decisions in our history,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. “Aligning our schedule with the world’s top leagues will strengthen our clubs’ global competitiveness, create better opportunities in the transfer market, and ensure our Audi MLS Cup Playoffs take center stage without interruption. It marks the start of a new era for our league and for soccer in North America.”
The 2027–28 MLS regular season will kick off in mid-to-late July 2027 and conclude with the MLS Cup Playoffs and MLS Cup Final in late May 2028. Similar to many other major international leagues, MLS will observe a midwinter break from mid-December through early February, with no league matches scheduled in January.
Prior to the new calendar change, MLS will stage a transition season from February to May 2027, featuring a 14-game regular season, playoffs, and MLS Cup. The results will determine 2027 qualification for the U.S. Open Cup, Canadian Championship, Leagues Cup, and CONCACAF Champions Cup.
These changes are part of a two-year review process that started back in October 2023. Initial projections for the 2027–28 season indicate that 91% of matches will fall within the current MLS season window.
Another key change of the calendar will significantly reduce conflicts between MLS league matches and national team call-ups for players, particularly during summer tournaments. Some of MLS’ match weekends this past season have fallen on the international break for many other top leagues.
Additional details regarding the 2027 transition season, 2027–28 regular season, and new competition formats will be announced at a later date.
The switch to the new format will not affect the 2026-27 MLS schedule.
minuses
-up against NFL and NBA instead of MLB
-playoffs up against NBA and NHL
-groundshare conflicts with NFL and CFL
-montreal doesn’t have a heated field
-more conflict with getting college, select, and HS kids to come watch
-more games in the north in bitter cold and snow
-like NFL or europe, every winter game after 3 pm becomes a night game
-find out what degree summer tournament success has been based on being a rare team with in-season fitness and game sharpness
-reduced acclimatization advantage for hot world cups
-muscle tweaks from playing in the cool
-whether the length of a winter break needed to reduce snow and cold issues reduces the summer offseason too short
pluses
-more games in the south in mild winter temps
-transfer window sync
-specifically ability to bring in marquee names as preseason and not summer buys
-tactics become more energetic with less need for surviving heat
-maybe we take off tournaments and international windows
Listened to FC Cincinnati Chairman on Golazo today. His big pros were some you mentioned, friendlies with big foreign clubs in preseason, breaking for Fifa windows not playing matches without your best players, transfer windows matching with other leagues.
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He did put a different spin on your minus of competing with other leagues. His point was currently MLS is holding its playoffs and it’s largely lost due to College Football and NFL taking all the oxygen plus the buzz over the starts of the NBA/CBB seasons. Playing the playoffs in late April and May CBB is over NHL and NBA have their playoffs but don’t get intense until June and MLB is still has 130 games to play. I don’t know if I completely agree with that but it does make some sense. The Crew drew 60,000 in April against Miami so if the product is good and they’re able to attract more top stars (even if they’re a little older, they’ll draw interest).
my understanding is there may be a winter break from roughly mid december to late february or early march. is the “january camp” coming right back? because if MLS plays into december then availability for that new timing is cooked, and if the league isn’t playing until february or march the practical fitness and sharpness justifications revive for a NT january camp and games.
as some have said i wonder what they do with the minors and USOC. USL acts independently. USL2 is a U23 league in the college offseason. even if college extended regular season into the spring, it’s no real change from now on an offseason league as they are still in school and the college will want them playing there, either spring training or some extended season.
based on (a) MLS’ attempts to use reserve or loan players and (b) the attempt to drop out a couple years ago i don’t think MLS cares. and if you look back far enough prior to 1995 i’d never heard of the cup and it looks like it was basically a springtime adult amateur national tournament akin to mcguire cup for youth select. while it is nice to have our equivalent of an FA Cup, it’s generally not taken seriously by top teams. when the dynamo are competitive in it, it’s usually a bad sign what our league chances are.
anyhow, i could see them trying to say they’re back out.
I wondered about US Open Cup as well. In the MLS press release they highlighted the 14 game mini season to start 2027 will determine qualification for US Open Cup.
One nice thing about being on a different calendar was that MLS players could play with European teams during the MLS break.
Seems like one of the first of these was Ben Olsen playing with Nottingham, and David Beckham played with AC Milan in (a bit more than) the MLS off-season.
I wonder if MLS players will now take advantage of the new MLS winter break do something similar.
meh. someone like henry playing here 5 years at a fairly high standard with limited or no loans makes the league look better than beckham constantly heading off for a loan saying he needs it to compete for england. it talks us down.
i also think the way landon’s career ended puts in question whether he was overused with the endless caps and many winter loans. he was athletic, stayed fit, and never got some big orthopedic injury. and yet he needed personal time off.
i am not a fan of mindlessly xeroxing all things europe but lining up the seasons is probably beneficial for transfers, trials, and even just sending a kid over there to train. we can bring in personnel in a common preseason window for both, you don’t have to wait until summer with your season half done and your roster half made or need to take apart what you did over the winter in terms of salary and lineup. also less pressure to sell midseason some kid who wants a transfer.
plus my understanding is there may be a lengthy winter break so you could let prospects/nextpro go train then. it just won’t be offseason. and i think that started waning when we became a more serious league. it was popular when we were weak. ok you can trial or work them out a couple weeks with no obligation. the more serious we get taken i think we can start to insist they buy off at market rates off scouting and don’t get a trial period.
Costa Rica, Panama, and Jamaica all need wins at home in final days of qualifying to make the World Cup.
Also no more Season Pass. All MLS matches will be available with just an Apple TV subscription. Still $13 a month but at least it’s not another $80 on top of it.
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Wonder what happens to Open Cup and Leagues Cup.
Prior to this announcement, it was not a requirement to have an Apple TV subscription in order to get MLS Season Pass. A customer could pay for the MLS Season Pass as a stand alone.
Yes $99 for the season without AppleTv or $80 if you were an AppleTV subscriber. I guess if you were just paying for season pass that’s not much different for you as an AppleTv subscriber it’s a nice savings for me.
This is the bigger news than the schedule change
Excellent news. Now its time to raise the salary cap. Raise that thing to 20 million take away GAM and TAM. Continue with the 3 DP’s and U22 initiatives DP’s.
I think they’ll hold off to see how revenue holds with the new schedule.