Five Notable Items From FC Dallas’ 2026 Schedule
MLS dropped the 2026 schedule about a whole month early.
Let’s look at a few interesting things about FCD’s 2026 slate of games.
1) The World Cup Break
The 2026 season is, in some ways, a bit of a trial run for the upcoming schedule shift in 2027. With the World Cup coming to North America next year, MLS will take an almost two-month break from late May until late July. This is, more or less, the same length as the new offseason with the switch to the fall-to-spring calendar.
MLS has taken time off for past World Cups, but never anywhere near as long. They typically took a break for the group stages and then picked play back up around the time of the knockout stages. But this break will be a good bit longer to accommodate all the venues in use for games or training, and to put the full soccer focus in the country on the World Cup.
For Dallas’ part, this almost splits the season into two halves: they’ll play 15 games before the World Cup break and 19 after.
2) No Home Games for Four Months
On top of the World Cup break, Dallas will go an extra period without playing a home game due to stadium construction. In the first half of the season, Toyota Stadium will retain the 2025 layout, with the west and south ends open. During that extended World Cup break, construction will finish up on the east-side work, the stadium will flip for the second part of the season, and fans will be seated on the east and south sides while construction on the west side begins.
This means Dallas will play an extremely home-heavy schedule from February through mid-May, followed by another home-heavy schedule from September through early November.
In the first 13 games of the season, Dallas plays nine home games. And in the final 12 games of the season, Dallas will play 8 home games. In each of those sections of the season, Dallas will have three-game home stands, and in each of them, they won’t play more than 2 away games in a row.
They really need to capitalize on these stretches because in between those parts of the season, they’ll play nine consecutive away games. Just before the World Cup break, they’ll travel to San Jose on May 16th and then to Colorado on May 23rd to start the road section of the season. Coming out of the World Cup break, play resumes on July 22nd in Portland, and Dallas will then play six more road games, finishing with St Louis on August 30th, before coming back home to re-open the stadium on September 5th against SKC.
Thankfully, this stretch has a little bit of kindness built in. Dallas will take a week off between games on August 1st and August 15th, and the World Cup break itself helps break things up. But there is one brutal stretch in there: on August 15th, Dallas travels to Austin, followed by a mid-week trip to Salt Lake on August 19th, capped off by a trip across the northern border to Vancouver on August 22nd. That’s a lot of mileage over the course of one week.
Certainly, though, more than anything else, the big break of home games in the middle of the season seems likely to define FCD’s season.
3) More Mid-Week Games
Over 20% of the 2026 regular season schedule, seven games in total, will be played on Wednesdays. This is a pretty sharp uptick from 2025, which featured just three mid-week matchups. The time crunch caused by the mid-season break is the likely driving force behind this. Still, it certainly feels notable, especially considering that, if last year’s same rules are used, Dallas will play in both the Leagues Cup and the US Open Cup in 2026, which will add even more mid-week games to the equation, possibly pushing Dallas into double digits in total mid-week games.
This isn’t really an advantage or disadvantage; everyone else in the league is dealing with the same circumstances, but it will certainly test the depth of the 2026 roster more so than the last few seasons.
Also, related note: Dallas does not play any Sunday or Friday games in 2026; all games are on Wednesday and Saturday, at least for the regular season.
4) Copa Tejas
As opposed to 2025, where Copa Tejas was basically wrapped up by mid-summer, it’ll take almost the whole season to decide both the Texas-wide competition and to determine who takes El Capitan for 2027.
Dallas starts its Copa Tejas and Texas Derby slate on March 21st, hosting Houston. Both rivalries then go dormant and won’t wake up again until after the World Cup, when Dallas travels to Austin on August 15th. Dallas will finish their slate against Austin about a month later, on September 19th in Frisco, before finishing out both Copa Tejas and the Texas Derby on October 17th in Houston, in what will be the latest Texas Derby regular-season match ever, outside of the 2020 COVID season.
Most notable here for me is the big gap between Texas Derby matches and the very close-together Austin matches. The Texas Derby could feature a lot of different names, as the first match will be held before the primary transfer window closes, while the second match is match 30 of 34. In comparison, whatever happens in the first match against Austin will stay very fresh for the second match just a month later. As always, all these matchups will be high points on the season.
5) First Time Going to Charlotte
For me, one of the best things about the upcoming schedule change is the chance to play every team in the league at least once each season. But for 2026, we’ll have one final season of a limited Eastern Conference slate.
For 2026, Dallas’ eastern conference opponents at home are Toronto, Nashville (who make up the first two games of the season), and Columbus, while they’ll travel to DC United, New York Red Bulls, and, for the first time, Charlotte FC.
Despite Charlotte’s fifth season in MLS, Dallas and Charlotte have only met once, a 2023 Leagues Cup group-stage match in Frisco. Next season’s match will be both the first-ever regular-season match between the teams and Dallas’ inaugural trip to play Charlotte at Bank of America Stadium on October 10th. It should be fun to see if a good-sized contingent of Dallas fans can make the trip.
What are your thoughts on FCD’s 2026 schedule?
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