The Union have the lowest payroll in MLS for the first time in their history

Throughout the recent years of the Union’s success, club leaders have enjoyed boasting about how it’s happened with one of MLS’s lowest payrolls. But never in the club’s first 16 seasons did it have the outright lowest payroll in the league, as calculated by data from the MLS Players Association.

In Season 17, it officially does.

That was the revelation from the labor union’s first salary release of 2026, which was published Tuesday.

The 32 players on this year’s squad are earning a combined total of $11,696,829 in guaranteed compensation. In a reflection of how many well-paid veterans were sold or released last winter, just one of this year’s players earns over $1 million: goalkeeper Andre Blake at $1,181,250.

Two of those veterans remain in MLS. Jakob Glesnes, now with the Los Angeles Galaxy, is earning $1,268,503 — a slight decrease from last year’s $1.31 million, but with a new contract through the 2028-29 season.

Tai Baribo, now with D.C. United, got the big raise he sought with a salary of $2.349 million. He was on $810,000 last year with the Union, and the club refused to pay him at a designated player level. D.C. agreed not only to do that, but to pay a $4 million transfer fee. Baribo has rewarded that faith with six goals in nine games this year.

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Of the players who replaced them, striker Ezekiel Alladoh is earning $540,000. Though his transfer fee was a team-record $4.5 million, his salary never was going to be huge.

He’s on an under-22 contract, not a designated player contract. The less-heralded status was meant to help take pressure off the 20-year-old, but his lack of goals through 10 league games have put it squarely on him — and the team’s front office.

Fellow new forward Agustín Anello, meanwhile, is earning $539,630. Centerback Japhet Sery Larsen, signed to replace Glesnes, is the highest-paid newcomer at $675,300. Another new centerback, Geiner Martínez, is at $360,204.

Left back Philippe Ndinga, signed to replace Kai Wagner, is earning $332,250. He hasn’t lived up to hopes, either, with just 213 minutes played over five league games, and he’s now sidelined with a hamstring injury.

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Many Union players got raises over the winter, whether through existing contracts or by signing new ones. The biggest raises went to Cavan Sullivan and Indiana Vassilev, $250,000 and $283,250, respectively, with the former getting it in his current deal and the latter through an extension.

Sporting Kansas City has the second-lowest payroll at $12,359,396. It may not be a coincidence that the Midwestern club is at the bottom of the Western Conference and the league overall, as the Union are last in the East.

Fifteen of the league’s 30 clubs, exactly half the circuit, have payrolls above $20 million.

The biggest-name newcomer is the San Jose Earthquakes’ Timo Werner, a veteran of Germany’s national team and many big European clubs. He’s on a $4,268,039 salary. His fellow German star, Thomas Müller, was upgraded to a designated player deal in his first full year in Vancouver and is earning $5,152,504.

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The top-earning American in the league is former U.S. national team striker Josh Sargent, who joined Toronto FC this year to try to reinvigorate his form and his World Cup hopes. He’s earning $5,265,667 and has two goals and two assists in seven games.

Inter Miami is once again splashing the cash, paying Argentine midfielder Rodrigo de Paul $9,688,320 — up from $3,619,320 last year — and new forward Germán Berterame $3,824,200. The highest number belongs to Lionel Messi, whose new contract last fall got him a big raise from his previous league record salary of around $20.4 million. He’s now earning $28,333,333, a total larger than all but two teams’ payrolls leaguewide: his own and Los Angeles FC.

The marquee earners in Hollywood once again are the team’s superstar forward duo of Son Heung-Min at $11,152,852, and Denis Bouanga at $4,939,217.

Each player’s salary figure officially includes two numbers: the base salary and guaranteed compensation. The latter number includes signing and guaranteed bonuses, plus marketing bonuses and agents’ fees, annualized over the term of a player’s contract, including option years.

For conversational and reporting purposes, the guaranteed compensation number is the one usually used here and around the league.

The annotations in parentheses mean the following:

(1) — Senior roster player; (2) — Supplemental roster player; (3) — Designated Player; (4) — Cap hit bought down with Targeted Allocation Money

(5) — International status; (6) — Homegrown Player status; (7) — Under-22 Player status to reduce salary cap charge; 8 — Supplemental roster spot 31, loaned to the reserve squad

(9) — Also has a “professional development role” with the team for work beyond the field; (10) — Off-roster supplemental player; (11) — Currently loaned out

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Across the landscape, MLS teams are paying a total of $630,955,755 to 916 players.

The average salary is $688,816.33, topping the record from last spring by nearly $40,000. The median salary is $352,104, also a record and the first time that number has topped $350,000. The lowest salary in the league, which is set by the CBA, is $88,025. It’s also the most common salary leaguewide, as it often is, with 59 players earning that sum.

Atlanta has the most players on the minimum with six, followed by Dallas with four. Colorado has five, followed by Nashville, San Diego, St. Louis, and Seattle with four. The Union have two, forward Stas Korzeniowski and left back prospect Kaiden Moore.

You already know the headline. Now here are the rest of the data.

Salary data do not include transfer fees, which occupy a significant portion of MLS team budgets and, these days, often are bigger than salaries. But the payroll comparison still is a snapshot of how teams handle the salary part of the equation. To learn more about teams’ histories with player sales and purchases, check out the data at Transfermarkt.us.

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It’s also important to note that players loaned out internationally usually still are counted on the MLSPA’s books. That can have a significant impact on the payroll rankings. For uniformity’s sake, all players listed in the MLSPA’s records are included in the calculations here.

Click here to see the team payroll comparison from the previous data set last fall.

The number of millionaires leaguewide is 133, down a little bit from last fall’s 138 but up from last spring’s 131.

As with the payroll rankings above, the table below may include some players who are loaned to clubs outside the league, but technically still on MLS teams’ books.

The positions listed here come from the MLSPA’s database. They might not all be perfect matches, but they’re close enough.

Here are the latest versions of other charts that are recurring features in this analysis, showing changes in key MLS salary metrics over time.