ºüÀêÊÓƵ City SC will start its inaugural season in Major League Soccer on Saturday, Feb. 25, with a game in Austin, Texas, and the team will play its long-awaited home opener the following weekend, Saturday, March 4, against Charlotte.
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As anticipated, City SC was placed in the Western Conference, and will play each of the other teams in the conference twice, once at home, once on the road, with the exception of Sporting Kansas City, which it will face three times, twice at home and once on the road. The league moved Nashville from the Western Conference to the East, anticipating that the league’s next expansion team will be in the West, creating a need to have teams play somebody three times to make the math work for the league’s 34-game schedule.
City SC will play seven games against Eastern Conference teams: Charlotte, Cincinnati and Miami at home, Chicago, Nashville, Toronto and Orlando on the road.
Most City SC home games will begin at 7:30 p.m. Of the 34 games, 26 are on Saturday, five on Wednesday, two on Sunday and one on a Tuesday (July 4). All of City SC’s games will be broadcast on MLS Season Pass, a pay service available through Apple TV+ for an added fee. Three games will be televised nationally by Fox (June 11), one on over-the-air Fox and two on FS1 (May 20 and Aug. 20). With the league’s Apple TV deal, there are no local broadcasts of games anywhere in the league.
The team has a break in its league schedule from July 15 to Aug. 20 but will still be active, for at least some of it. Major League Soccer and Liga MX, the Mexican professional league, have begun a tournament called the , with all MLS and Mexican teams taking part. Each team will play three games in pool play, with the top two teams advancing to a knockout-round stage. That schedule will be announced later.
In addition, City SC will also play in the .
Nashville’s move to the Eastern Conference will make City SC the eastern-most Western Conference team, which also means it will likely have the most arduous travel schedule in the league, including six trips to the West Coast. After Kansas City, the next four closest teams in the league — Chicago, Nashville, Cincinnati and Columbus — are in the other conference, and the next closest Western team, St. Paul, is only a few miles closer than Atlanta.