The USL released the full 2026 season schedule today and it has some interesting developments.
To start with, Jägermeister is no longer the sponsor of the USL Cup. That apparently was a 2-year deal and was not renewed. The new title sponsor is Prinx Tires, whose name should already be familiar; the company advertises on the USL website and and in stadiums.
The Cup will again feature all Championship and League One teams, which will total 43 for the 2026 season. That’s with the Championship adding Brooklyn FC and Sporting Jax and League One adding Athletic Club Boise, Corpus Christi FC, Fort Wayne FC, New York Cosmos and Sarasota Paradise. The 7 additions are offset by North Carolina FC going on hiatus and Texoma FC dropping to League Two.
43 is inconveniently a prime number so an even distribution of teams is not possible. It’s close though: there are 6 groups of 6 and 1 group of 7. 8 teams will advance to the knockout stage, so there will be one wild card.
The groups are “regional,” but that is stretching the definition a tad in some cases. The Legion is in Group 3 along with One Knoxville, Chattanooga Red Wolves, Corpus Christi, FC Tulsa and San Antonio FC. With the exception of newcomers Corpus Christi and San Antonio that’s not much changed from last year, although the Three Sparks did not play One Knox. They did beat both the Red Wolves and Tulsa.
The Legion will again not play One Knox. The first game will be at San Antonio (April 25th) followed by a second road game in Chattanooga (May 16th), with the 2 home games being Corpus Christi (June 6th) and Tulsa (July 11th). So the group will start and end with the 2 toughest matchups.
As for league play, the Legion will be one of the 6 Eastern Conference teams playing an extra in-conference game. That will be against Loudoun United and will be an away game. Not great but it could be worse.
Also not great is that the Legion starts the season with a double-game week. Hard on the heels of the home opener against the Tampa Bay Rowdies is a Wednesday night matchup with Hartford Athletic. It will be a home game at least but that’s quite a way to begin. Also tough could be the season finale, which will be on the road at…the Pittsburgh Riverhounds. Ugh.
In fact, the final 3 months of the season are going to be incredibly rough. In the 13 games from August 1st onwards, the Legion will be at home just 5 times. That segment of the schedule does include all four games against the expansion teams, but even so.
As far as bye weeks are concerned, the Legion gets its first immediately after that initial double-game week and gets a second two weeks later after going to the Charleston Battery. Supercross is in Birmingham while the Legion are in Charleston and Monster Jam the weekend after, so that makes sense.
There are a couple more byes later in the year but they are mostly before or after more double-game weeks. Through the season the Legion will have a total of 7 midweek games, 5 of which are at home. The 2 away are at the Oakland Roots (Wednesday, June 17th) and Louisville City (Wednesday, July 29th).
Lastly, the Legion’s 5 Western Conference opponents in the league will be Monterey Bay FC, Las Vegas Lights, the aforementioned Oakland Roots, New Mexico United and the Colorado Springs Switchbacks.
That last is about the most generous the schedulers have been to the Three Sparks. The rest of the season is distinctly lacking in any favors. For a team that is going to be in a serious rebuilding phase it will be pretty challenging. To be fair, the schedule is in good part dictated by the other tenants of Protective Stadium so options are limited. And the need for a new stadium gets clearer every year.
