Major League Soccer is about to look a lot more like the rest of the soccer world.
Beginning in 2027, MLS will overhaul its calendar and move to a summer-to-spring schedule that runs roughly from July to May, aligning its season with top European leagues and the FIFA international calendar. It’s one of the biggest structural changes in league history, and it’s going to reshape everything from transfer business to how fans experience the playoffs.
How the new calendar actually works
The change doesn’t happen with a hard cut from one year to the next. Instead, 2027 will serve as a bridge year with a special “transition season.”
From February to May 2027, MLS will stage a 14-game regular season, followed by playoffs and MLS Cup under a compressed format. That short campaign is designed to close out the old spring-to-fall era and set the table for the switch. Those results will also be used to determine qualifications for tournaments like the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, Canadian Championship, Leagues Cup and the Concacaf Champions Cup.
The league is also reshaping its competitive structure. Conferences are being shelved in favor of a single-table format with five geographic divisions, each containing six teams. Clubs will face divisional opponents twice and every other team once, preserving the 34-game slate while keeping travel somewhat manageable.
Why MLS is making the move now
After MLS Cup is lifted in May 2027, the league goes dark for a brief off-season. The first full season under the new model will then kick off in mid-July 2027 and run through April 2028, with playoffs and MLS Cup played in May 2028. In that new rhythm, teams will play 34 regular-season matches from July through April, with a winter break from mid-December to early February to avoid the worst of the weather in northern markets.
On the surface, the switch is about dates on a calendar. Underneath, it’s about MLS trying to fully plug into the global soccer ecosystem.
First, there’s the FIFA international calendar. Right now, MLS routinely plays through international windows or has to shoehorn awkward breaks into the schedule to accommodate national-team duty and summer tournaments. By lining up closer to Europe’s July–May rhythm, MLS can better sync with those windows, minimizing conflicts and creating a cleaner week-to-week product.
Second, the shift makes MLS more compatible with global transfer markets. European clubs operate on a seasonal model that assumes contracts, loans and transfer deals are built around summer and winter windows. When your season runs February to December, those windows cut straight through the middle of your year. By flipping to a summer-to-spring calendar, MLS clubs can sign and sell players at more logical points: building rosters in the summer window before kickoff, then adjusting in winter at the mid-season break.
Commissioner Don Garber has framed the decision as a “historic moment” designed to elevate MLS’s standing in the global game, improve player movement, and make the league a more attractive destination and selling market.
Better TV windows… and some brutal cold nights
The timing of big matches is another major driver. Under the current schedule, MLS Cup and some of the most important playoff games often land in late fall, sharing oxygen with the NFL, college football, MLB playoffs and the NBA/NHL regular seasons. By shifting to a May championship, MLS gets its showcase matches into a relatively lighter part of the U.S. sports calendar and into more attractive weather.
The placement of the winter break is designed to dodge the worst of the cold in places like Minnesota, Chicago, Colorado and the Canadian markets. But the league is being honest: some clubs will still deal with cold-weather matches at the edges of that window. Early-season games in February and late-season fixtures in April could still be frigid, especially at night. League officials argue the number of truly brutal dates will be limited, and in exchange, playoffs and MLS Cup should be played in far more fan-friendly conditions.
What it means for players and clubs
For front offices, this change touches everything:
- Roster building: The primary window will effectively become the same summer window everyone else uses. MLS clubs will be able to sign players coming off European deals, loan in young prospects, and sell high-value talent without blowing up their season midstream.
- Loans and development: Aligning calendars makes it easier to arrange outbound loans for young players and short-term loans from abroad, since the clocks match up.
- International duty: Fewer regular-season games should clash with key FIFA dates, meaning less stress around missing core starters for stretches of the schedule.
From a player-welfare standpoint, the introduction of a true off-season in May–June plus a winter break in mid-season could lead to better rest and more predictable recovery windows—especially for players juggling international commitments.
What fans should look for in 2027 and beyond
For supporters, 2027 is going to feel strange.
The 14-game sprint from February to May will be intense, with limited time to recover from poor starts and an inevitable sense that everyone’s figuring it out on the fly. The league will crown a champion from that mini-season, then hit pause before starting a “proper” new era a few months later. Record books are going to need asterisks and explanations.
Once July 2027 arrives, the new pattern will settle in:
- Kickoff in the heat of summer.
- A long campaign that carries through the fall.
- A winter break around the holidays.
- A sprint to the finish in spring.
- MLS Cup in late May, in what should often be ideal soccer weather.
The move brings plenty of questions—how attendance will fare across weather extremes, how travel will feel with a single table and five divisions, what the final playoff format will look like—but there’s no question about the intent. MLS is trying to stop feeling like an outlier and start acting like a fully integrated part of the global game.
If nothing else, 2027 is going to be a year MLS fans talk about for a long time.
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