MLS MADE THE historic announcement on Thursday that the league was going to switch scheduling and adopt a season that aligns with the global game. The league will now begin in the late summer, take a winter break, and resume in the spring. The goal is to take advantage of transfer markets, be able to respect FIFA international windows, and have the playoffs go uninterrupted.

Per the release: “The 2027-28 MLS regular season will begin in mid-to-late July 2027 and conclude with the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs and MLS Cup presented by Audi in late May 2028.”

Overall, the league is painting a nice picture on what is a big risk. Sure, the current schedule has problems. But some of those problems are real, and some of those problems are overblown in this announcement. But moving to a Summer-Spring season also creates news problems and doesn’t necessarily fix the existing problems.

Weather

For some of the league’s teams, this switch will not change much in terms of the environment of their home games. But for other teams, there are going to be a lot more cold weather games.

After this current November international break, only eight MLS teams and seven MLS games remain. Under the new switch, all 30 teams will have to play another month into mid-December. In the later stages of the playoffs, fans are willing to put up with more because of the importance of the games. But midseason games in cold weather?

That is not something that should be easily brushed aside. MLS is not the first league to have tried this. In 2010, the Russian Premier League switched from a calendar year to Summer-Spring like MLS now. The results were disastrous. Reuters had a feature six years after the switch highlighting the falling attendances, frequently cancelled or moved games, and a decline in fan interest.

MLS has enough teams either in manageable winter climates or indoor stadiums where the results won’t be as drastic. But they could have a similar impact on many of the league’s bigger teams.

MLS has different climate constraints than most of Europe. Had most of Europe’s leagues had weather similar to Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Colorado, Salt Lake, Minnesota, Columbus, or Cincinnati, would they have had their schedules the same as they do now?

With this switch, MLS made it more difficult to get fans to go to home games for a big part of the season.

Footprint remains similar

In terms of the number of months in a year MLS games will be played, the footprint on the calendar year will be smaller. The new proposed winter break is essentially the same length of the current offseason. Now, on top of that, there is a new offseason in June through mid-July.

To be fair, MLS in June is historically a mess with major international tournaments and this eliminates that mess altogether. That is good.

The flow

MLS will now adopt a winter break in the middle of the season. While the Bundesliga has a winter break, the MLS winter break will be longer than any other top league. It will be like what we see in the Danish Superliga. It will now become the only major North American sports league that pauses for two months and them resumes.

The question is how do the league’s existing fans adjust to such a big interruption to the flow of the season? Maybe it will not be an issue or maybe the season’s momentum will be lost? Right now, it’s all just a guessing game, or a risk.

Transfer market

In the media release from MLS, the top two reasons for this change were related to player signings: "optimize global transfer market activity" and "maximize player signings.”

There are some merits to this. There are deals that do not happen over the summer because teams do not want to lose a key player in midseason. Those deals would likely happen if the season is yet to begin. 

A good weekend for Los Angeles ? pic.twitter.com/Ps9ldH3k48

— LAFC (@LAFC) November 3, 2025

With regards to selling players then in January, team are dealing with limited needs and the players getting sold do not have a preseason to try to adjust.

That said, there are a lot of important leagues that operate on a calendar year and still manage to sell players sufficiently. Brazil’s Serie A and most South American leagues are on a variation of a calendar year. These leagues also continue to be major sellers in the world market.

It is a little overstated. Top young players have been sold from the league at a sufficient pace.

As for the buying side, MLS teams have been aggressive regardless of time of season or year. Many of the top imports within the league have arrived midseason, and there hasn’t been much complaining. Sure, if Messi arrived in Miami before the season started in his first year, it would have resulted in them making the playoffs.

But for most of the recent substantial imports – such as Heung-Min Son – joined midseason. With the league’s playoff format, having these players there for the playoffs is really the most important thing.

Playoffs

MLS said that the league is exploring new playoff formats to go along with this schedule change. Regardless of how the playoff changes, it is a big win that the playoffs, nor the stretch run leading to the playoffs, will be affected by the three FIFA international windows in the fall. The September, October, and November windows break up the flow of every league but it is even worse to be deciding titles and elimination during this run.

The talk about which American sports leagues MLS has to compete for viewership is off base. No matter what time of year, the NFL, MLB, NBA, or NHL is ongoing. These decisions need to be made independent of other leagues. If anything, it’s harder now for the MLS playoffs to compete against the NBA and NHL playoffs along with the start of the MLB season.

But the fact that the MLS playoffs are now uninterrupted is good.

Bottom Line

There is no crystal ball to tell how this is going to go. It seems like there is a lot of risk to fix problems that were exaggerated.

A new calendar for a global league.

Beginning in 2027, Major League Soccer will adopt a summer-to-spring season format — a historic evolution in the league’s competition calendar.

Details: https://t.co/YOlzd4oGDB pic.twitter.com/JYzdkKX01o

— Major League Soccer (@MLS) November 13, 2025

But it does help with not having the league playing in June during international tournaments and it does help with the playoffs going uninterrupted and into nicer weather.

There will be a lot of challenges, and it won’t always be easy for fans. All we can do is hope it works.

Apple TV altered

MLS also announced on Thursday that its broadcasting deal with Apple TV will be altered. Instead of having a separate MLS package on Apple TV, MLS games would now become part of the general Apple TV package. Like with the previous deal, MLS season ticket holders will get an Apple TV package included with their season tickets.

A new era of MLS on Apple TV.

Starting in 2026, watch every MLS match—all part of an Apple TV subscription. pic.twitter.com/nWtExKQRzx

— Apple TV (@AppleTV) November 13, 2025

Whatever the numbers were behind this deal, it’s a good move for all parties. MLS is a league that is trying to grow and expand. It’s very hard to do that behind a paywall. Apple TV is still a paywall, but it has a massive market behind it. In total there are 45 million Apple TV subscribers and now MLS will get to push into those numbers as opposed to only those that bought the MLS package.

This is the way to expand.