With two of its biggest stars back, two new teams joining the fold and an expanded broadcast presence, the National Women’s Soccer League is embarking on its 14th season hoping to benefit from the recent surge in the popularity of women’s sports and an upcoming summer focused on soccer.
The season begins Friday with the Washington Spirit hosting the Portland Thorns, which has been billed as a showdown between Trinity Rodman and Sophia Wilson.
The two players — two-thirds of the Triple Espresso trio with Mallory Swanson that helped the United States win the gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics — give the league a boost with their star power. Swanson, who plays for the Chicago Stars, is still working her way back from maternity leave but is expected to rejoin the club at some point this season.
Wilson, who plays for Portland, was on leave all last season for the birth of her daughter. She signed a one-year contract extension with the Thorns for the 2026 season.
Rodman re-signed with the Spirit after drawn-out contract negotiations that called into question the league’s salary cap and resulted in a new “High Impact Player” policy.
Rodman’s return was a win for the league, which lost some of its high-profile players — including Sam Coffey, Naomi Girma and Alyssa Thompson — to European clubs last year.
There were fears that the salary cap would prevent teams from retaining top players. The HIP rule allows teams to go $1 million over the cap to sign certain players.
The league had the option of raising the salary cap, which stands at $3.7 million for 2026, instead of adopting the more complicated rule. Commissioner Jessica Berman stood by the decision in her preseason remarks this week.
“The mechanism of the high-impact player rule actually rewards or creates an incentive for clubs to not only go out and sign elite players, but it creates space within the salary cap to surround that player with other top talent,” Berman said.
There is certainly more space for players, thanks to another wave of expansion.
The league welcomes two new teams this season, with the Boston Legacy and the Denver Summit kicking off Saturday and bringing the NWSL to 16 teams.
Denver opens on the road against Bay FC in California. The Summit announced they have sold more than 50,000 tickets for the team’s home opener against the Spirit on March 28 at Empower Field at Mile High, home of the NFL’s Denver Broncos.
The Legacy opens at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts — home of the NFL’s New England Patriots and Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution — against reigning NWSL champion Gotham FC. Halftime will feature a performance by New Kids on the Block, the Boston boy band that rose to fame in the 1980s.
The league has awarded a 17th expansion team to Atlanta to begin play in 2028. Berman announced this week that another expansion club for 2028 will be announced later this season.
As for TV growth, the NWSL’s broadcast partners include CBS, ESPN, Amazon’s Prime Video and Scripps-owned ION. The league expanded its media rights agreements last year, adding a new deal with Victory Plus to air 57 games for free this season.
The league will also feature in ESPN’s “Women’s Sports Sundays” this summer.
“We will be working together with the WNBA to make sure that women’s sports, and the NWSL and WNBA in particular, are showing up front and center to the way people think about and plan their weekend of sports content,” Berman said.
Berman said the league’s viewership on traditional broadcast channels was up 20% last season, and up 30% on digital services.
Men’s soccer could also provide an assist for the NWSL.
Canada, Mexico and the United States are co-hosting the World Cup this summer. The NWSL, which will pause play during a part of the tournament, faces logistical challenges in that two of its teams, Boston and the Seattle Reign, will be pushed out of their home stadiums or otherwise impacted by the tournament.
The Reign will play three matches in Spokane, Washington, while the Legacy will play seven games in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Overall, though, the 48-team international tournament could offer a boost.
“I hope, when we look back on the season, that the challenges it created will dwarf in comparison to the opportunities it created because of the benefit and halo effect of the men’s World Cup more broadly,” Berman said. “Our strategy around the summer of soccer is going to be a key area of focus for us.”
And by season’s end, the league hopes to have taken another step forward.
The Kansas City Current finished atop the standings in 2025 with a historic season and won the NWSL Shield, setting regular-season records for points (65), wins (21), home wins (11), road wins (10), shutouts (16) and fewest goals conceded (13).
Gotham FC, the eighth seed in the playoffs, eliminated Kansas City with a 2-1 quarterfinal victory. Gotham went on to defeat the Orlando Pride in the semifinals before a 1-0 victory over the Spirit for the NWSL title.