The National Women's Soccer League plans to begin its 2027 season on Feb. 11 in Los Angeles to coincide with the Super Bowl across town three days later, ESPN has confirmed.
The Feb. 11 start date will be the earliest in NWSL history by over a month as the league tries to fit in a full 30-game schedule while taking seven weeks off for next year's Women's World Cup.
Angel City FC will host a season-opening game at BMO Stadium in L.A. Super Bowl XLI will be played on Sunday, Feb. 14, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California -- about 7 miles southwest.
"Given the realities of the match calendar in 2027, we tried to think through if we're playing on Super Bowl weekend, how do we try to be a part of the conversation and not separate the sports world, but just aggregate it more around that area?" Carlin Hudson, the NWSL's vice president of strategy and one of the primary employees in the schedule-making process, told ESPN.
The NWSL has never played an official match as early in the calendar year as February. Previously, the earliest game in the calendar year was a March 7 NWSL Challenge Cup match in 2025, when the Orlando Pride hosted the Washington Spirit.
NWSL teams will begin the preseason between Jan. 2 and Jan. 7 next year -- six weeks after the 2026 NWSL Championship, marking the shortest offseason in league history.
The NWSL Challenge Cup, which will put the 2026 NWSL Shield winner against the 2026 NWSL Championship winner, will be played on Feb. 6.
That match will be played at a neutral site that avoids cold weather and the league will look at markets currently outside the NWSL, Hudson said.
This year's Challenge Cup was played in Columbus, Ohio, which was awarded the match before it was officially awarded a 2028 NWSL expansion team.
The 2027 regular season will end with an Oct. 31 Decision Day before the eight-team playoffs and an NWSL Championship on Nov. 20.
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Next season's kickoff in Los Angeles will fall on Thursday of Super Bowl week, which is usually NFL Honors night, when the NFL hands out awards such as MVP in primetime.
The NWSL has not yet finalized specific promotions for its opening game. The Super Bowl will air on ESPN for the first time on Feb. 14. Hudson said that there are only two extra weekends of competition in February, since there is a FIFA international break from Feb. 23 through March 6.
There are still inherent challenges around weather and venue availability with so many NWSL teams in traditionally cold markets, from Boston and New Jersey on the East Coast to Denver and Utah farther west.
"Weather is always something that we schedule around," Hudson said, adding: "I don't think we want to build a schedule that inherently sets us or players up for a challenging game."
Still, the NWSL's first February games in history are notable. Earlier this year, ESPN reported that the NWSL board of governors scheduled a vote on a proposal to flip the NWSL calendar to begin in late summer and end in late spring.
The proposal received intense pushback from the NWSL Players Association over concerns around training and playing in current venues during harsh winter weather.
The NWSL board of governors then scrapped its vote before convening in April and has committed to keeping the current calendar through at least 2030. Playing in February looks like the new reality for the growing league either way.
In 2028, the NWSL will expand to 18 teams and, potentially, a 34-game schedule. The league's collective bargaining agreement requires a one-week rest during the season, and that usually coincides with several more weeks off for a major tournament.
Experts on both sides of the calendar debate have said for years that summer breaks and earlier starts would become the norm and that the league would just need to decide when it starts and ends within those windows.
Next year's schedule footprint brings that reality to life. In 2027, the NWSL will pause play for the CBA-mandated off week beginning on June 7 before the World Cup break kicks in and lasts through the final on July 25.
That's seven weeks (and weekends) off total. The Olympics are always the summer after the World Cup (and they are in L.A. in 2028), in addition to major continental tournaments like Euros, which pull many top players away from their NWSL teams for international duty.
The new FIFA international calendar was created after the NWSL's current media rights deal was signed. FIFA recently made some international breaks longer to block out two weekends at a time.
The NWSL has various contractual broadcast commitments (including with ESPN) that effectively require it to find 26 open weekends in a calendar year. The current FIFA calendar runs through 2029, and the current NWSL media rights agreements run through 2027.
"We will essentially have the ability to rewrite the entire competition structure," Hudson said.
"I don't expect us to have drastic changes coming into it, just given that we will figure out how we ingest the two new teams. But I think we have the ability to look ahead and rewrite it and work collaboratively with potential media partners and the players' association and all of our key stakeholders ahead of that."
Hudson said the league wants to release its 2027 schedule in December to provide the usual amount of lead time for teams and fans, but next year has its own unique challenges.
Many NWSL teams are secondary tenants in MLS stadiums, and MLS is flipping its calendar next year to switch to a fall-to-spring model. MLS needs to schedule both its 2027 spring "sprint season" and its 2027-28 season, which might not be set until much later than the NWSL needs a schedule.
That leaves the NWSL in a precarious position of uncertainty around venues and dates -- something that is likely to be a recurring issue with MLS' structural change.
Hudson said that she expects that the NWSL will be able to release a full-season schedule with the expectation that some dates could change, which is common in sports.
"It's a great question and one we're still working through with everybody," Hudson said.
"And when I say everybody, I mean our clubs, their venues, MLS. It will be a very collaborative process for the next couple months, and we've already been in it for a few months as well. It's part of why we tried to get ahead of a 2027 schedule footprint early, so we could start mapping it all out. It will certainly be a new process for us."