The 2026 World Cup presents logistical issues for the NWSL

The countdown is on for the 2026 World Cup, and a massive piece of the logistical puzzle is finally in place: the schedule. For every professional sports league in the United States, though, there’s a big question: how to work around the world’s biggest sporting event. For summer sports on the men’s side, this may be a little easier — MLS traditionally hits pause for the World Cup group stage, for instance.

For the NWSL, though, it’s not so clear-cut. And it’s complicated by the fact that many of their markets and facilities will be impacted by the tournament’s needs over four-to-six weeks. There’s room for the NWSL to draft off a massive soccer tournament, but if they play through it, there’s a lot of problem solving ahead.

So let’s look at the scope of the problem for 2026 — but also the larger one the NWSL has avoided definitively answering through a decade-plus of play so far in its existence.

A 2026 logistical pickle

By the time the 2026 season rolls around, the NWSL will be at 16 teams, with Boston and a still-TBD market joining the league. This means at least seven NWSL markets could be impacted by the men’s World Cup: Boston, New Jersey/New York, Kansas City, Houston, Seattle, San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. 

“The NWSL will work to address any scheduling challenges that might arise, while putting plans in place to ensure that we capitalize on the unprecedented attention for soccer in the U.S. and around the world,” a league spokesperson said in a statement issued to The Athletic, following an interview request.

The NWSL, like every pro league in the U.S., is engaged with FIFA in ongoing discussions about how to plan out the 2026 summer. While host city contracts stipulate that no other major sporting events may happen at the same time as the World Cup, what seems more likely to happen is that FIFA will determine on a case-by-case and market-by-market basis whether competing events — including standard regular season games for any pro league — could impact their own logistics for a World Cup match. 

Of those seven impacted markets, only one NWSL team plays in the stadium planned for World Cup matches — including a USMNT group-stage match — in Seattle Reign FC.

“We’re thrilled to have our home, Lumen Field, be the host of six World Cup matches in 2026,” Michelle Haines, the team’s VP of marketing and ticketing, said in a statement. “This will be a significant moment for our club, the city of Seattle and soccer fans within the region. Seattle Reign FC will work closely with the SeattleFWC26 organizing committee, city officials, business leaders and industry peers to ensure this event leaves a lasting and positive impact in the Pacific Northwest.”

The Reign also declined to have any staff interviewed for this story.

The NWSL faces a bigger challenge across the board (including Seattle), though: what gets selected as training sites or base camps for the teams in the 2026 World Cup — the first time the men’s edition will be expanded to 48 teams. They’re going to need a decent amount of training facilities. 

While the selection of these sites hasn’t happened, and the bid book by this point is both a suggestion and an outdated one at that, considering potential training sites is still worth the thought experiment.

There is one notable outlier in the seven affected NWSL markets: Kansas City. The Current, by that point, will have their own stadium and their own training facility, allowing them to control their own destiny in the summer of 2026. Notably though, Katherine Holland, executive director of KC2026, told The Athletic in November that KC’s goal was to “potentially utilize both their their training facility and the competition venue,” but that they were in “a little bit of a holding pattern” because how the NWSL would handle the tournament was still an unknown.

Boston could also perhaps avoid conflicts, though their plans to renovate White Stadium in Franklin Park were announced well after any planning for 2026. There are plans for the expansion team to build its own training facility as well, though no mention of location yet.

But for five NWSL teams, either their home stadium, training facility, or both are potential 2026 training sites. In Seattle, Starfire Sports Complex is on the list as a potential training venue. In LA, BMO Stadium made the list, which would obviously affect Angel City’s home games. Gotham FC could share the same problem with Red Bull Arena (plus both training facilities for the Red Bulls and NYCFC) in the mix. For Houston, Shell Energy Stadium and the Houston Sports Park are both earmarked, impacting the Dash’s home stadium and training facility.

In the Bay Area, both PayPal Park and the Spartan Soccer Complex make the list as potential training venues. Currently, Bay FC is using the San Jose State facilities as their interim training facility, with plans to build their own — and their own dedicated stadium — in the future. It’s unclear what they’d be able to accomplish before the 2026 season.

“The FIFA World Cup 26™ will mark another watershed for the sport in North America, much like previous men’s and women’s FIFA World Cups (1994, 1999, 2003, 2015) significantly propelled the popularity of and participation in the game across the region,” a statement issued to The Athletic on Wednesday states. “We have been in ongoing, positive conversations with all major sports leagues regarding the FIFA World Cup 26, and will continue working closely with them all to create an unforgettable tournament for fans, participants and stakeholders. Furthermore, we see the FIFA World Cup as a major platform from which the game will continue to thrive for both men and women across all three host countries.”

This isn’t just 2026

The NWSL has an annual summer problem.

The league now has a mandated week off thanks to the CBA, but that doesn’t help for major tournaments. For this summer’s Olympics, the NWSL will also break from league play, meaning no regular season action from July 8 to August 18. The NWSL plans to “organize a tournament, featuring international participants and all 14 NWSL clubs,” per their schedule footprint release issued in December. There are still no additional details or plans around that tournament, beyond that it will start during the weekend of July 19-21.

Usually, the NWSL faces the challenge of tournaments overseas. In 2025, they’ll lose some international players to the Euros and Copa America Femenina. (On the men’s side, the U.S. is also hosting Copa America this summer, then multitasking with the FIFA Club World Cup and the Gold Cup at the same time in 2025.)

Starting in 2026, though, the difficulty level goes way up, with the 2026 World Cup, potentially hosting the 2027 World Cup with Mexico, followed by the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. (The NWSL will also lose multiple players in the summer of 2026 to CONCACAF World Cup/Olympic qualifiers.)

To compare, the USL Super League, the newly sanctioned Division I league launching later this year, does not have a summer problem thanks to its alignment with the global calendar — and there are other benefits to this just beyond needing to decide whether or not you’re going to suffer through the logistics of playing.

“It’s an incredible advantage,” Super League president Amanda Vandervort said on Tuesday of the league’s fall to summer schedule during a virtual press conference. “First, our players can plan their international careers in combination with their club careers, and not be fighting that battle about club and country throughout the summer months. It also creates opportunity … to have your top players in market for games on a more frequent basis and creates a real energy.”

For the NWSL, there is still time to continue the conversations with FIFA and to determine the path of most reward/least damage.

It certainly helps having some NWSL voices on host committee boards. Bay FC owner Aly Wagner is on the Bay Area’s, Dash goalkeeper Jane Campbell on Houston’s, and Current owner Angie Long on Kansas City’s.

“We are working very closely with the Kansas City Current as a partner on this,” Holland said in November. “They are an incredible organization and just really willing to collaborate and in any way that they can, again, also somewhat pending a decision from the NWSL on how they handle 2026.”

As she noted, it would be hard for the NWSL to sit out two summers in a row for the World Cup, as things operate now. Her best guess at this time? 

“We’re hopeful that there’s something that can be done, whereby maybe the league doesn’t shut down, but that the host cities or the cities where there are training facilities that the schedule can accommodate the needs of the FIFA World Cup during that time.”

Two-plus years out, it doesn’t look like there’s a perfect answer for the NWSL, but it’s hard to imagine the league having an easy go of trying to play through the 2026 World Cup.

(Top image: Kirby Lee/Getty Images; John Dorton/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF; Design: Eamonn Dalton)