On Wednesday, the National Women’s Soccer League released its regular season schedule for 2025 (press release). The 2025 NWSL schedule has a few pleasant surprises, which, from a sporting perspective, are significant improvements compared to the 2024 schedule.
For 2025, the regular season is divided evenly by the July break for confederation tournaments such as the Women’s EURO. Every team will play exactly 13 matches before the break and exactly 13 matches after the break.
Additionally, the 2025 schedule will follow an unofficial apertura/clausura format with each club playing every other team exactly once before the break and again after the break. This is a marked departure from 2024, where after 13 matches, two teams each had not played five teams (Bluesky post) Also, last year, the San Diego Wave and Seattle Reign had already played each other twice less than two months into the season.
The 2025 season will end with a “Decision Day”, with all 14 teams in action on the final Sunday. However, there is no explicit guarantee that all seven matches will kick off simultaneously as was the case in 2023.
Another positive improvement is the elimination of Wednesday matches. While this does decrease the number of teams that have stretches of compressed scheduling, in 2025, a few teams have weeks with just three days in between match days. Most notable of those teams is Gotham FC, which plays four matches over fourteen days in April.
As the schedule is subject to change for various reasons, all analysis is based on the original 2025 NWSL schedule as announced in the league’s press release.
QUICK LINKS
- Additional Notables
- Broadcast Coverage of Matches in the United States
- Distribution of Matches By Day of the Week
- Schedule Adversity: Home and Away Streaks
- Schedule Adversity: Half-Season Home and Away Comparisons
- Schedule Adversity: Off Days Between Matches
- Opponent Diversity: Them again, so soon?
- The Basics
Additional Notables
For marketing reasons, the NWSL is introducing a “Rivalry Weekend” which will be held during the weekend of August 8th to the 10th. Featured matches for that weekend include
- Portland Thorns vs. Seattle Reign
- Gotham FC vs. Washington Spirit
- Angel City FC vs. San Diego Wave
Regarding “Decision Day”, the NWSL’s press release does not explicitly state that all seven matches will kick-off simultaneously. Here is the relevant paragraph:
The regular season concludes with the return of NWSL Decision Day, featuring all 14 clubs in action on Sunday, November 2, as teams battle for a spot in the 2025 NWSL Playoffs presented by Google Pixel. ESPN will televise two Decision Day matches while the remaining five contests will be available on NWSL+.
For the most part, the NWSL’s 2025 regular season schedule respects the FIFA international windows. The lone exception is the six-week break that includes the June international window and a pause for major continental competitions such as the Women’s EURO. The second half of the season resumes on August 1st, while the 2025 Copa América Femenina which involves all 10 CONMEBOL women’s national teams, plays its third-place match on August 1st and its final on August 2nd. Also, a match for fifth place will be played on July 28th.
Thus, those clubs with current internationals from top CONMEBOL countries, namely, Brazil and Colombia, will likely be without the services of those players for at least the first weekend of the closing half of the season.
Curiously, the Chicago Stars have two home matches with no announced venues. Those matches are on Saturday, June 14th, versus the Seattle Reign, and Sunday, September 7th, versus the Orlando Pride. Last year, the former Chicago Red Stars hosted a match at Wrigley Field on June 8, 2024. In their schedule release, the Stars stated that they “are currently planning special events for June 14 and September 7 that the club will announce over the coming weeks.”
For more discussion of the 2025 NWSL schedule, see this earlier post: “NWSL: 2025 Schedule Footprint and Competition Calendar with International Windows”.
Accessibility Notice: All of the tables displayed as screenshots in this post are included in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. The spreadsheet also includes the full 2025 regular season schedule as a table.
Broadcast Coverage of Matches in the United States
The NWSL is in its second year of its current media rights deals, and will have essentially the same distribution of matches across the various outlets.
As was the case in 2024, each team’s broadcast exposure will vary significantly based on several factors involving the team’s expected viewership (e.g. its fanbase and having popular players), venue scheduling, broadcast windows, et cetera.
Table 1, below shows the distribution of streaming platforms, over-the-air channels, and cable channels on which a team’s matches, both home and away, will be shown.
(In the below table, the NWSL+/P+ column represents the matches that will be simulcast by a CBS digital platform, namely its free CBS Sports Golazo Network and/or Paramount+. These matches will also be on NWSL+ in the United States.)
Some clubs, such as the Washington Spirit, Gotham FC, Portland Thorns, Kansas City Current, and Angel City will have several matches across CBS, ABC, and ESPN networks, while one club, the Utah Royals will not have any matches on those traditional outlets, and another, the Houston Dash, will just have one.
Of the 182 regular season matches, just six will be played outside the traditional weekend days of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. All six of those matches will be shown on CBS Sports Network.
Angel City is the team most affected by the non-traditional broadcast windows used by CBS Sports Network, as it will host two matches on Mondays and another two matches on Thursdays, all during the closing half of the season.
In the lone Tuesday match, the Portland Thorns host Gotham FC on April 22nd. Both clubs have away matches on the previous Friday, April 18th. Portland faces its Cascadia rival, the Seattle Reign, so travel will be minimal. Gotham plays Angel City and will almost certainly fly directly to Portland afterwards.
Distribution of Matches By Day of the Week
Given that Prime Video having a guaranteed match on Fridays and CBS Sports Network’s non-traditional broadcast windows, it is worth taking a look of the distribution of matches per day of the week.
Table 2 shows the distribution of home matches per weekday by club. Angel City has the most evenly spread-out distribution, as it hosts matches on five different days of the week, while the North Carolina Courage have the most concentrated home matches, with all but one match being played on a Saturday.
Although most teams are secondary (or lower) tenants in their respective venues, some teams, such as the North Carolina Courage and Bay FC have high numbers of Saturday matches, at 12 and nine, respectively. Bay FC’s nine matches the number of home matches hosted by the only team that owns and controls a stadium, the Kansas City Current.
Meanwhile, clubs such as the Houston Dash, Racing Louisville, the Seattle Reign, and Utah Royals each have a high number of Friday home matches, ranging from seven for the Reign and Royals, to nine for the Dash. Even the 2024 NWSL Champions, the Orlando Pride have an unusually high number of Friday matches, with six. All other teams have three or fewer.
A handful teams have a relatively high number of Sunday home matches, such as the Chicago Stars and Washington Spirit, with seven and six, respectively.
Table 3 shows the distribution of matches, both home and away, for each club. Although not as insightful as the comparison of home matches, this is useful for getting an idea of the exposure each team gets on different days of the week.
Schedule Adversity: Home and Away Streaks
The next two tables, which are combined into one image, give an overview of each club’s schedule, showing their opponent for each match as well as whether the match is at home or away, along with the adjusted 2024 end-of-season rank for each team.
The 2024 ranks do not take into account Angel City’s three-point deduction due to its violation of NWSL league rules because the ranks are being used as a proxy for expected competitiveness.
(Note: For the opening half of the season, the numbers 1 to 13 do not represent the same match week for all clubs, as some teams will have played one more or one less match, starting with Week 5. All teams are synchronized again in Week 11.)
From a sporting perspective, any streak of three or more matches at either home or on the road should be considered unusual. Extended home stretches mean that a team has no travel days, which allows for more time for recuperation and training. Excessive away stretches are not only straining on players, coaches, and support staff, but could also mean higher travel costs, whether through spending more days on the road and/or flying back to the home market in between matches. (There is likely academic research on this that back up my statements, but for now, I do not have time to present a more thorough argument.)
Angel City’s schedule stands out for having a four-match away stretch as well as two stretches of three home matches in a row. However, the four-straight away matches overlap the summer break, so it is effectively only a three-match away stretch. Also, those three away matches are all against lower-ranked opponents (Seattle Reign, San Diego Wave, and the Utah Royals), based on the adjusted 2024 rankings.
During the opening half of the season, the Portland Thorns have a three-match home stretch followed by a trio of away matches.
The Kansas City Current have a three-match away series during the opening half of the season and a three-match home series in the closing half.
Uniquely, the Houston Dash play eight home matches during the opening half of the season, and thus will have eight away matches, including one stretch of three away matches in a row, during the back half.
Additionally, Gotham FC, the North Carolina Courage, and the Utah Royals each have a three-match away stretch during the 2025 season.
Schedule Adversity: Half-Season Home and Away Comparisons
Although each team will face a full slate of opponents during both halves of the season, not all clubs will have relatively balanced halves when it comes to the expected difficulty of their home and away opponents.
Table 6 shows the average ranks of each teams home and away opponents for each half of the season. As the NWSL uses a balanced home-and-away schedule, the ranks of each team’s home and away opponents in the respective halves of the season are mirrored. Thus, a team that faces the top teams on the road during the opening half of a season will have (what is expected to be) a relatively less challenging slate of away matches during the closing half of the season.
(By the nature of the rankings, if all things were equal, the number one team, i.e., the Orlando Pride, would rank as having the easiest schedule. Using the relative ranks of the 13 other teams to measure difficulty would be another option, but given the unbalanced nature of each team’s schedule, the difference is likely to be fairly insignificant.)
Based on the adjusted 2024 rankings, the Kansas City Current and the Portland Thorns have the most lopsided home-and-away schedules in each half-season. The Current begin with the easiest home slate, while Portland has the second most difficult away stretch during the opening half. Those numbers are flipped for the closing half.
Angel City also has highly uneven home/away schedules for each half-season, as it has the most difficult away slate and the third-easiest home slate during the opening half of the season.
As noted earlier, the Houston Dash, which has eight home matches during the opening half of the season, is the only team that does not have an essentially even split of home and away matches (e.g. six/seven or vice versa).
Schedule Adversity: Off Days Between Matches
Load management, along with sufficient recuperation, are significant concerns for soccer players at all levels, not just professional athletes. Additionally, compressed scheduling does not allow teams to properly train and prepare for their opponents, which reduces the potential competitiveness of matches.
Having players and coaches who are not one-hundred percent physically, not available, and/or under-prepared for a match reduces the quality of the league’s on-field product.
Table 7 shows how many days are in between each team’s matches. Here, an “off day” is considered a day when no match is scheduled. Thus, if a team plays a match on Saturday and then plays a match during the following weekend on Sunday, there are seven “off days” between those matches.
With the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit playing the Challenge Cup one week ahead of the opening weekend, those two teams will begin the regular season after six off days, while all other teams will not have yet played official matches.
With a weekends only schedule, the number of off days could be as low as four (e.g., going from a match on Sunday to a match on Friday). On the opposite end, there could be as many as eight days in between matches (Friday to the next Sunday).
For the purposes of the above table, numbers of off days between five and eight are considered to be normal, and thus are not highlighted. (Ideally, the number of days between matches would probably be always six or seven.)
Only the North Carolina Courage have a relatively balanced distribution of match days, as they have at least five days between all league matches.
Gotham FC has one of the most compressed Spring schedules, as it has a stretch of four matches, including three straight away matches, with just 10 total off days in between:
- Sunday, April 13th: vs. North Carolina Courage
- Friday, April 18th: at Angel City FC
- Tuesday, April 22nd: at Portland Thorns
- Saturday, April 26th: at Washington Spirit
Angel City, the Kansas City Current, and the Washington Spirit, all due to having televised weeknight matches on Mondays and Thursdays, each have one unusually long breaks of 9 or 10 days between league matches.
Opponent Diversity: Them again, so soon?
As noted in the introduction, the 2025 schedule will not be excessively unbalanced regarding when individual clubs play specific opponents, as each team will play all of the 13 other teams exactly once in each half of the season.
However, some teams will face each other again in relatively quick succession, with a few match-ups being separated by just one other match in between.
(Note: This table only should be read across. E.g., the Washington Spirit play eight other matches before facing Gotham FC again, while Gotham only plays seven other matches, due to differences in match frequency.)
Racing Louisville is the only team that will face two opponents just one match apart, as it will end the opening half of the season against the Kansas City Current and the Orlando Pride and then will begin the closing half with the same two opponents.
From a fan perspective, the six week summer break somewhat negates the almost back-to-back nature of such a stretch, but from a sporting perspective, a close proximity could present a perceived unfair advantage for one team, e.g. if there are players absent due to injuries or other reasons, or could even disadvantage both teams, e.g. due to extreme weather, relative to the other teams in the league. In other words, matches that are more spread out would be less affected by random factors.
The Basics
These final three tables show some the distribution of matches based on day of the week, the month, and the start time.
For the 2025 season, there will be 80 unique days where at least one match will be played. This is one additional day, compared to 2024, which had 79.
The distribution of matches per weekday is roughly the same as in 2024, which also had six matches not played on a weekend (Friday through Sunday).
Roughly two-thirds of the matches have scheduled start times of 7:00 p.m. Eastern or later.
Women's Soccer Express 