The NWSL final is headed back to Washington.
The annual championship game will be played at Audi Field on 21 November, returning to the home stadium of the Washington Spirit that last staged the final in 2022.
The Athletic was the first to report the location. The league will announce further details on Wednesday.
The Spirit have turned Audi Field into one of the NWSL’s premier venues in recent years. Their 2-1 win over the Seattle Reign on Saturday drew a crowd of 19,365, their third sellout of the season.
All four of the Spirit’s home playoff games in 2024 and 2025 drew sellout crowds of more than 19,000 fans. The league used those games as showcase opportunities, with three of the four played in its national CBS broadcast slot. The final is set for prime time on CBS.
On paper, there’s a decent chance the stadium will be cheering for the home team in the final, with the Spirit having reached the championship game in each of the past two years. Since the league began staging its final at a neutral site in 2015, two teams have played in a final at their home stadiums: Portland in 2018 (a 3-0 loss to the Courage) and North Carolina in 2019 (a 4-0 win over Chicago).
The 2022 championship at Audi Field, a 2-0 win for the Thorns over the Kansas City Current, drew 17,624 fans, the third-highest attendance in NWSL final history.
The previous three finals were held in San Jose, Kansas City and San Diego. The 2023 final at San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium set the record attendance at 25,011.
Leave a Reply