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The MLS stadium boom is alive and well as the 2026 season kicks off this weekend, beginning what will be an unprecedented stretch of change for the league over the next several years.
After six MLS clubs moved into soccer-specific venues between 2021-2025, three more are set to open new stadiums over the next three years: Inter Miami in April, New York City FC in 2027, and Chicago Fire FC in 2028. The New England Revolution are also closing in on a potential stadium deal.
Those builds come as MLS will take a record seven-week break during the FIFA World Cup this summer, and play a 14-game “sprint season” next spring before aligning with the global soccer calendar by switching to a fall-to-spring schedule for the 2027-28 season.
Welcome to Miami
Lionel Messi and Inter Miami, the 2025 MLS Cup champions, will play its first match at the 25,000-seat Miami Freedom Park on April 4 against Austin FC.
“We’re building a stadium that will be special for our city, for our fans and for our club,” Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham said at a stadium construction event late last year.
Miami Freedom Park is part of a $1.3 billion multi-use development, with the soccer venue estimated to have cost $350 million.
“It’s important locally, nationally, and internationally,” MLS EVP of club performance Charles Altchek tells Front Office Sports.
The 2026 season will mark the fourth for Messi in MLS, after joining midway through the 2023 campaign.
The World’s City
NYCFC will continue playing home matches at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field this year and during the shortened 2027 spring season, before moving into the 25,000-seat, $780 million Etihad Stadium in Queens in late summer 2027.
“It’s a relief, honestly, more than anything, because it’s been a long time coming,” NYCFC CEO Brad Sims tells FOS.
NYCFC is owned by Abu Dhabi’s City Football Group, which has a global multi-club portfolio headlined by Premier League powerhouse Manchester City.
Sims feels like the new stadium will propel NYCFC, which lost to Miami in the Eastern Conference Finals last year, to the next level.
“We’re in the biggest, most important market in the country, and arguably the world,” he says. “This is the world’s game. New York is the world’s city. Queens is the world’s borough. It’s just been the one thing that has been holding us back—not having our own home, and having to bounce around between venues.”
A Win in the Windy City
The Chicago Fire, which currently play at Soldier Field, are targeting a 2028 opening date for their $750 million, 22,000-seat downtown stadium that was just finalized last year.
“We announced that in June and it was late September that we received our approvals from city council, which is record-breaking time from public announcement to approvals,” Fire president of business operations Dave Baldwin tells FOS. “A lot of that, obviously, being the fact that it is being privately funded.”
Fire owner Joe Mansueto—the sole investor in the MLS club, which was recently valued at $575 million, No. 21 in the league according to Forbes—is footing the bill for the new venue, which is part of a larger $8 billion development in the area. Meanwhile, the Bears continue to explore stadium options in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa as they search for public funding.
Like NYCFC, Baldwin is excited for new revenue opportunities the stadium will bring.
“One of the tough parts about playing at Soldier Field is we are essentially blocked out on some of the key sponsorship categories that are protected by the Chicago Bears,” he says. “And also we don’t have access to the stadium on some dates because of concerts or Bears games.
“As you look towards the new stadium—while the club has done a really nice job and the team has worked really hard to grow fandom locally and grow sponsorship revenues and everything else—we really see this stadium as sort of the next catalyst for developing the club.”
‘MLS 3.0’ On the Way
Stadium development will continue to be a key growth area for MLS clubs as the league moves deeper into its fourth decade of existence.
“I think that that will be part of MLS 3.0,” Altchek says. “That you’ll have teams that in the future are looking at what makes most sense for them as it relates to whether it’s upgrading their current facility or looking at a new location with a different opportunity because it’s either more connected to a city center or there’s strategic elements around it that are not available to them in their current location.”
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