Photo by Ron Soliman
Major League Soccer announced on Thursday, November 13th, that club owners have voted to shift the season schedule to align with top leagues around the world. Beginning in the summer of 2027, MLS will adopt a summer-to-spring season format, among other notable changes to regular-season play.
Most importantly, the MLS season will begin in mid-to late July 2027, and conclude with the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs in late May 2028. The league will take a “midwinter break” from mid-December through early February, with no league matches played in January. The use of the phrase “league matches” in this claim suggests teams may still play friendlies, such as how the Union played midseason Slavia Prague back in January as part of its preseason trip to Marbella, Spain.
Things will remain as-is for 2026, but MLS will play an abbreviated season from February to May 2027 to determine qualification for the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, Canadian Championship, Leagues Cup, and Concacaf Champions Cup.
MLS claims that the change will have a number of strategic benefits. League Commissioner Don Garber stated, “The calendar shift is one of the most important decisions in our history. 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 league claims that aligning with international breaks and the summer primary transfer window will allow teams and individual players alike to make full use of marquee signings and international windows without interrupting mid-season flow.
There is also a plan to integrate divisions, similarly to other North American sports, in a new regular-season format. Plans for this change were not detailed in the league’s press release.
In additional news, MLS also announced today that they are doing away with MLS Season Pass for the 2026 season, and instead, all matches will be broadcast to all Apple TV subscribers for no additional cost. MLS season ticket holders will receive a free annual subscription to Apple TV at no additional cost.
Let’s hope that Apple shows some sense and schedules some of these winter games during the day unlike now where 7:30 is the default and sitting on the “sunny” side makes no difference!
100%
So a few things that were mentioned but no details given were with the switch to Apple TV, MLS gave up their deal of 50/50 after crossing a subscription threshold. Garber said they were quite happy and it worked out in the leagues favor. Logically you would assume that there will be an increase in spending on the roster as Apple and MLS will want to enhance the product with so many disgruntled fans after the switch. Also with this kicking in after the World Cup, you probably would target players who performed well and MLS fans just had a chance to see play in the World Cup. Will the Union make a bid for a former Union USMNT player in 2027 is the question I have?
writers for the Athletic are suggesting that changing the spending rules is going to be a tougher sell than was changing the schedule alignment.
I’m still wondering how they are going to handle 2026 with the World Cup smack in the middle of the season. In the past (2010-2018…I have no idea what they did pre-Union and the 2022 Cup wasn’t until November) they have taken a couple of weeks off for the group stage and then played through the knockouts. Are they going to do the same thing next year?
Given that the games are here, I’d hope they take the entire tournament off and then run games every day for a week or two, starting the night of the final. Let’s see.
“Every day for a week or two?” How many games are you talking about? This isn’t baseball. There needs to be some recovery time.
I’m assuming Section 114 means different teams playing during that span. Sort of like the league stretched out the first games of the first round of the playoffs from a Friday all the way through the following Wednesday.
Apple doesn’t *want* to show games every day. It wants games max 3 times a week – preferably only two – because it wants to do its MLS 360 show while the games are going on. If there is only one or two games a day, it won’t make sense to produce MLS 360.
Looks like the new season will have 32-33 weeks depending on the dates they start and end. CONCACAF Champions League will take up all of the spring as it runs from February 3rd to May 30th in 2026. Chances are this will overlap the playoff push in the future and the final might move to the first week of June to avoid the Cup final. Getting US Open Cup and Leagues Cup in with a summer break will take some creativity in 2027.
Another reason for a truncated “season” in the spring of 2027 is to maintain a revenue stream.