The three best and three worst things about the 2026 Austin FC schedule

On Thursday afternoon — considerably earlier than usual — Major League Soccer let loose its 2026 schedule, which is the last full 34-match season before the league converts to a July to May calendar.

Though we're a few years removed from elaborate schedule release videos that were de rigueur in the early 2020s — a BMX biker riding around town before he's taken away (certainly not kidnapped) in the Verde Van, Black Joe Lewis playing to a Hotel Vegas full of supporters, and Verdisimo going after something called the Verde Scrolls (containing the 2023 schedule) in a very shall we say stylized video, — Schedule Release Day still gives fans perspective on how the coming season might go, which away trips to plan, and where schedule congestion might roil the team. (Last year, we cast a worried eye toward May and were proven right.)

With that said, here are the three best things (as I see them) in the 2026 Austin FC schedule. (We'll start positive.)

The three best things about the 2026 schedule (to me)

A Sunday afternoon in March against the Spoon winners

After a second home opener in three years against Minnesota United FC (on opening weekend, no less), Verde scored a 1:30 pm kickoff on Sunday, March 1, against D.C. United. Given that the Wooden Spoon winners just changed sporting directors and have a head coach who barely coached in 2025, they might not be markedly improved in 2026 — or, at least, in this part of the 2026 season.

While Minnesota's a tough opener, D.C. provides a bit of a breather before Verde plays four straight matches against playoff teams ... followed by five straight matches against teams who missed the playoffs in 2025.

Lots of eyes on Austin FC on April 4

After six straight matches on the road to start their 2026 season — possibly as defending MLS Cup champions — Inter Miami CF will have its home opener fairly late in the season, on April 4 ... because they'll be opening up the long-awaited Miami Freedom Park with much fanfare, and certainly with Lionel Messi at the center of it all.

And they'll be hosting Verde.

It's a great chance for Nico Estévez and his team to spoil a party, and at the very least, it's a memorable away trip for Austin FC fans and a chance to finally see Messi play. It's not Messi in Q2 Stadium, of course — I'm increasingly convinced that will never happen — but it's Brad Stuver getting to stop Messi shots and Brendan Hines-Ike and Oleksandr Svatok getting to test their defensive mettle against Messi.

(Maybe this isn't such a great thing after all. In fact; I'll visit this, in part, in our three worst items for a different reason.)

Copa Tejas could be decided in September (or perhaps even earlier)

Here's the Copa Tejas schedule for 2026. (Home team is listed first.)

• March 21, Dallas vs. Houston
• April 25, Austin vs. Houston
• July 25, Houston vs. Austin
• Aug. 15, Austin vs. Dallas
• Sept. 19, Dallas vs. Austin
• Oct. 17, Houston vs. Dallas

With Houston having to play its first two Copa Tejas matches away, and Dallas having an incredible stretch of road matches while construction workers finally build a roof on a stadium originally nicknamed "The Oven." Dallas will play nine road matches between bookending home matches on May 13 and Sept. 5. This sets up well for Austin to get at least a win against Houston in April and against a road-weary Dallas in August. Let's say Dallas beats Houston in the first match, and let's say, worst-case scenario, Austin loses to Houston in July in the Shell.

In that scenario, Austin has six points and Dallas and Houston have three heading into the Sept. 19 match. Verde winning there clinches Copa Tejas.

And let's be ultra optimistic and say Austin wins its first three Copa Tejas matches and Dallas and Houston tie their opener. At that point, Austin has nine points, Dallas has one, and Houston has one. That's clearly enough to wrap it up, as Dallas could only get to seven points and Houston could only get to four.

(Of course, there's also a possible repeat of the 2023 scenario, in which Austin backed into winning a Copa Tejas because Dallas and Houston tied in their final match, allowing Austin's edge to hold.)

The three worst things about the 2026 schedule (to me, and maybe to you)

Too early away trips out East (and to San Diego)

Part of this has to do with the huge yawing gap for the World Cup (which we'll get to in the next section), but if you were envisioning a fun summer trip to Chicago or another fun East destination or a weekend in San Diego, think again. Here are the East away trips, which wrap up with a match happening just 13 days after Easter.

• at Charlotte, March 7
• at Miami, April 4
• at Toronto, April 18

That is the sum total. Also, the San Diego match this year? It's May 13. Specifically, it's Wednesday, May 13, It's three days after Verde travel to Minnesota and three days before hosting Sporting Kansas City ... because the Minnesota away match in Sunday.

There's one consolation, though: Aug. 1 away at Colorado. That sounds nice.

There really won't be soccer in Austin this summer

So, there's a massive gap in the 2026 schedule because of the World Cup. Austin will play an away match May 23 against St. Louis, and then resume play at Q2, against Seattle, on July 22. The team's last home match before the World Cup is May 16, against Sporting Kansas City. But then, and we'll get into part of why in the next section, they won't play at home again until Aug. 15. (That's the Dallas game.)

So, Austin goes 60 days between home matches, followed by 24 days between home matches.

You will not believe the end-of-season congestion

Remember how May had seven league matches in it? Austin's got one stretch that's similar ... and it's right at the very end of the season. Here's what it looks like:

• Oct. 10, vs. Nashville SC (yes, them again, yet Verde still can't get a regular-season match against Chicago)
• Oct. 14, at LAFC (yep, midweek match)
• Oct. 17, vs. Vancouver
• Oct. 24, at SKC
• Oct. 28, vs. Real Salt Lake
• Oct. 31, at LA Galaxy (with Riqui Puig theoretically intact)
• Nov. 7, vs. Portland

There's another thing that came up on the just-released Emergency Podcast supplementing this article ... if there's a need to postpone a match from earlier in the season, it's likely to get reschedule-wedged into one of the midweek spots remaining here (which would be Oct. 20 or Nov. 3).

There's a window in the calendar in the first half of August in which there are no matches for no immediately apparent reason ... but there's a theory we unveil in said Emergency Podcast that makes a lot of sense (but it's sort of awful), involving Leagues Cup.

We haven't even talked about where Open Cup's going to fit into this. MLS doesn't exactly prioritize Open Cup when it unveils its schedule, but the World Cup's going to wreak havoc on that calendar in 2026, and then the schedule change does that again in 2027. I'm puzzled but eager to see how the scheduling nerds pull it off.

One other thing to contemplate

Again, going to point to the Emergency Podcast, but this schedule, with its two-month gap, is similar to how the MLS season will be structured in 2027-28. If you think of the July through November part of the 2026 season as the first half of a sample season, and the February through May part of the season as the second half of a sample season, you can see how the decision to make the calendar conversion happen in '27-'28 versus '26-'27 might be in part to allow 2026 to be a test run of sorts.

It's hard to understand, still, what the 2027 mini-season will look like, and how that schedule announcement will manifest — though reactions to which teams Austin normally plays being left off the schedule will be paramount. (With a 14-game season, I'm guessing early that each team will play a team in its conference once, and the playoffs will be a sprint run.)

I'm also predicting, in 2026, we'll see an elimination of the play-in game — with just the top eight teams from each conference getting in — and, finally, the dispensing of the best-of-three series. In addition to Decision Day being Nov. 7, there's an international break that goes Nov. 9 through Nov. 17. Keeping to the current playoff schedule would place an MLS Cup in 2026 dangerously close to Christmas.

Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. For more coverage, check out Emergency Podcast! (an Austin FC Podcast) wherever you get your podcasts.