How the NWSL is building plans around expansion, men's FIFA World Cup for 2026 season

NEW YORK – NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said the league plans to name another expansion team sometime in 2026, intending to introduce that team in time for the 2028 season.

The league will expand to 16 teams with the introduction of Boston Legacy and the Denver Summit, for the 2026 campaign, which opens on Friday. They have already awarded a 17th franchise to an ownership group in Atlanta led by Arthur Blank, the Home Depot co-founder who counts MLS' Atlanta United and the NFL's Atlanta Falcons in his portfolio, with plans to play their inaugural season with the 18th franchise in 2028.

"We have been intentional about extending the ramp-up period for all of our expansion teams as we move forward," Berman said in a press conference on Wednesday. "It's the reason we're working on team 18 in 2026 and hope to give them a very long runway. It is also the reason we changed to a rolling process as opposed to having arbitrary deadlines that are based on our deadline as opposed to their readiness and so the next phase of our expansion is really going to be driven by our assessment of when we think a team is ready to go to market and actually launch so that we will not be forced into decisions before we feel like they can actually effectively launch."

Columbus is reportedly in the conversation to win an NWSL expansion team, according to ESPN, through a bid led by Haslam Sports Group, which owns MLS' Columbus Crew and the NFL's Cleveland Browns.

Berman also said the league will eventually plan to welcome more teams, the commissioner saying roughly 12 prospective ownership groups are interested in joining the NWSL, but the timeline is not currently determined.

"Because we're on a rolling process, some of it will be dependent on the market and so we have a dozen or so groups that we are continuing to talk to and depending on their readiness, will help inform our strategy beyond team 18," Berman said. "Of course, we're also thinking about a whole bunch of other factors, one of which, for example, is the fact that 2028 will be the first year of our new media deal and that will extend likely through the [2031] Women's World Cup so all of that will be taken into account when we decide what we will do beyond team 18."

Planning around the World Cup

Expansion will be one of the headline-making moments of the NWSL's 2026 season but like many in the soccer world, the men's World Cup in North America will play a sizable role in the league's plans for the new season. That includes an intentional decision to plan matches during the competition, according to Berman – and a match that could act as a bellwether for Columbus' reported expansion bid.

"We are hosting our Challenge Cup intentionally during the men's World Cup in a non-men's World Cup city," Berman noted. "It will be in Columbus, which is a pre-determined or neutral site for us and gives us the opportunity to weave our soccer narrative into the national narrative around the men's World Cup's moment in time. We also have made the decision to return to play during the men's World Cup so you will actually be able to watch and attend NWSL games during the men's World Cup, beginning with Fourth of July weekend, which coincides with the knockout rounds so that there will be less tunnage or less games that are happening on the men's World Cup side and give us an opportunity to occupy some of that space when there are still going to be millions of people paying attention to soccer in this country and globally."

The tournament, though, has forced some logistical updates outside of the schedule. Two NWSL teams – Boston Legacy and the Seattle Reign – play in stadiums hosting World Cup matches, meaning those two teams will open their seasons on the natural grass FIFA has been growing for this summer's competition. While the games are being played, though, the Legacy and the Reign will be kicked out of their stadiums; it has forced the former to move several games to Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and the latter to play at One Spokane Stadium during that stretch.

"We choose to try to make lemonade out of lemons when situations like that happen," Berman said. "In particular, this is the direct result of us not controlling our buildings and being a tenant where there are other competing priorities … There are some other benefits where we get to bring our games to communities where we might not otherwise be able to play. One example of that is Spokane or Pawtucket in Rhode Island and so it gives us an opportunity and it forces us to innovate and to expand the game's reach in ways that we might not otherwise have done and we did our best to make the best of a challenging situation."

No decision on a calendar flip

While an upcoming switch to a fall-to-spring calendar awaits MLS next year, Berman said the NWSL's power players have yet to make a decision on the topic, even if it is something that the league is discussing.

"We're analyzing it and this topic, as in the calendar, is probably one of the more important strategic decisions that any professional league has to analyze when we think about we have to live in a very delicate and symbiotic relationship between the professional leagues and the national teams," she said. "The current women's international match calendar runs through 2029 and so we're taking that into account as we think about our future state looks like and no decision has been made about what we might do and we'll continue to consider it with our board."

Ten NWSL teams will share stadiums with MLS clubs during the 2027 season, seven of which are essentially paying rent while the other three are part of ownership groups that own the building. Berman said that, in the meantime, MLS' switch could eliminate some scheduling conflicts that currently exist with concurrent seasons.

"I think it creates some challenges and it also creates some opportunities," Berman said about MLS' calendar switch. "Just to give some examples, some of the challenges, of course, is that some of the stadiums might want to have concerts in the summers. I'm sure that's not a secret. One of the opportunities it might create is that we will able to know the fall schedule for our playoffs and championship which, right now, is subject to change because it lines up with MLS' playoffs and championship, which is not yet scheduled so like everything related to the calendar, there are puts and takes around every possible scenario and so it is not net-negative, it's not-positive. There's just pros and cons."

Sarah Gregorius, the NWSL's vice president of sporting and a former New Zealand international, said she has no preference and that her department is prepared to handle the challenges of both calendars.

"We have to be cognizant of that and any analysis that we do, any conversations about changing the footprint from one to another has to relate to that international framework," Gregorius said in an interview with CBS Sports. "It's not as if I would put my thumb on the scale and say it has to go in one direction over the other. We would make it work no matter what. There's just advantages and disadvantages to everything but every single league, every single governing body talks about the calendar almost daily. It's got such a long shadow over everything that you can do, right? It's a very factual part of life in this globalized sport so honestly, I don't have a strong view. I'm happy to work within the confines of what is presented because there are pros and cons to both and we just have to, no matter what, find a way to put on a great show and put on a great product, protect our athletes and make sure our scheduling works to the benefit of their performance and well-being."