Major League Soccer announced a major shift in its competition calendar to a July-May schedule in 2027, aligning the league with the European calendar, on Thursday.
America’s top-level league currently runs from February through November. The change will be implemented in July 2027, and the regular season will conclude in April 2028, with May allocated for playoffs.
The league will also morph into a single-table competition, but will include five six-team divisions at the start of the new, altered season, according to The Athletic’s Paul Tenorio.
The new competition calendar also features a winter break from mid-December to early or mid-February, like Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1.
“The calendar shift is one of the most important decisions in our history,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said on the league’s website. “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 playoffs’ current format is playing in November, with an international break squeezed in between Round 1 and the conference semifinals. It currently competes with the climax of the college football and NFL seasons for TV coverage.
Shifting the annual playoffs to the spring, with the first matches happening in May, will help ensure “maximum attention and visibility for the league’s most important matches,” the league said.
The switch also ensures participating MLS teams will be match-ready for the CONCACAF Champions League, which starts in February. Currently, MLS teams will have to play its qualifying matches just as the league season begins, meaning match sharpness and fitness are not at the optimum levels yet.
The switch will also align with international soccer’s two transfer windows — three months in the summer from June to August, and the whole month of January for the winter — which will increase participation in the global market.
The league’s current transfer window runs from January to April, a crucial part of many European teams’ seasons, and a time when they are reluctant to part with players.
“We’ll be able to sign players when the biggest talent movement happens – in the summer – instead of midseason when integration is difficult,” Will Kuntz, general manager of 2024 MLS Cup champions LA Galaxy, told MLS.
The highly anticipated switch has had its champions for the last 20 years, but the league only began to discuss the possibility in October 2023. Their research concluded that 92% of league soccer viewers — defined by the organization as those who have watched at least one match in the current season — supported the switch.
Critics of the calendar switch expressed concerns about matches being played during the winter months in northern markets, such as Minnesota, and the potential for losing matches played during the cooler summer months. However, The Athletic reported the league believes it is only adding a few games outside of the current competition calendar due to the winter break.
The MLS also reported initial projections show “that 91% of matches will fall within the current MLS season window.”
The Athletic also reported that the league will stage a “sprint season,” likely to be 14 games from mid-February through May in 2027, ahead of the calendar flip.
The schedule flip will coincide with the opening of New York City FC’s new soccer-specific stadium in Willets Point, Queens. It is scheduled to open its doors in early 2027, coinciding with the originally planned start of the season.
The league also announced it is still finalizing a transition plan with the MLS Players Association for the 2027 calendar year.
