Major League Soccer lays out a key piece of how its calendar flip next year will work
The "sprint season" in the first half of 2027 will see each team play 14 games from February to April, then playoffs into May.
With just under a year to go until MLS starts its big switch to a winter-centric schedule, the league has unveiled its plans for a key piece of the transition.
The league announced Thursday that the “sprint season” slated to take up the first half of next year will start in February, with a 14-game regular season running into April. The league did not give an exact kickoff date.
Each team will play the other 14 teams in its geographic conference once, resulting in seven home games and seven away games per club.
» READ MORE: MLS will move to a winter-centric schedule in 2027
There will then be playoffs into May, with eight teams from each conference qualifying. That’s a reduction from the current nine. The postseason format will be a single-elimination bracket all the way through, getting rid of the best-of-three first round in the current format.
MLS further said the sprint season will qualify five teams to the 2028 Concacaf Champions Cup, as usual. That makes sense: The continental tournament starts in February, so the next full MLS season in 2027-28 won’t be over yet.
Those five teams will be the MLS Cup winner, the Supporters’ Shield winner, the regular-season winner of the opposite conference, and the next two teams in the Shield standings (the leaguewide points table).
There will also be a Leagues Cup in 2028, though the date has not been set. Nine teams from each conference will qualify for it; however, the league didn’t specify which ones.
The full 2027-28 season will start in July, with the playoffs scheduled the following May. There will be a winter break from mid-December until early February.