Every few years MLS decides its playoffs are complicated enough, and every few years it’s right. The latest proposal, reported by The Guardian and The Athletic, would blow up the postseason as we know it: 20 teams, a single table, a double-chance round for the top eight, and reseeding after every round.
The proposed changes would debut with in the 2027-28 season, and if you’re an FC Dallas fan trying to figure out whether this helps or hurts, the honest answer is “it depends on which version of FC Dallas shows up.”
Let’s walk through all these changes, because there is a lot of it, and some of it is actually intriguing.
First, the part that's already locked in
The calendar flip is happening. Voted, approved and will kick in next year. After a Sprint Season to begin 2027, MLS will move from the spring-to-fall schedule used since day one of the league and will move to a summer-to-spring calendar that matches Europe. MLS will kick off the new calendar in late July, take a break for winter, resume play around early February before wrapping up in the spring.
The regular season structure changes too, and this part is confirmed: no more Eastern and Western Conference. MLS becomes a single table with five geographic divisions of six teams each. Dallas is reportedly slated to be in a division with their two Texan rivals along with three Southern California teams (LAFC, LA Galaxy and San Diego FC).
That’s the settled stuff, now let’s dive into what is coming.
The playoff proposal: 20 teams and a "double chance"
Here’s what’s still just a proposal, not confirmed. MLS has yet to confirm any of this, so some details could still be ironed out. But if you are like me, you trust the reporting by The Guardian and The Athletic.
Twenty of the league’s 30 clubs would qualify for the playoffs. Yeah, up from 16 teams. Which is a lot of teams. More teams alive deeper into the season should mean more meaningful games. For MLS that also means more eyeballs on the league. At some point that could mean a fatter media-rights deal when the current deal with Apple ends in 2029.
The 20 teams don’t all enter the same way. The new format will split them into two paths:
The Play-In (seeds 13-20). Eight teams, four single-elimination games. Win and you advance. Lose and your season’s over. Four survivors move on.
The Wild Card (seeds 9-12, plus play-in winners). Those eight teams pair off, and the four winners punch their tickets into the main bracket.
The Double Chance (seeds 1-8). Hang on tight, this is the one that gets interesting. MLS is taking this straight from Australian Rules Football’s finals system. The top eight get a Round 1 with a safety net. Win your game and you jump into the quarterfinals. Lose and you don’t go home. You move into a second-chance bracket with a chance at clawing back in. The whole idea is to reward regular season excellence with the margin for error.
After that, it funnels down the way you’d expect: single elimination all the way to MLS Cup.
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The wrinkle that makes it actually clever
Every round from the Wild Card on gets reseeded. The highest surviving seed always draws the lowest and hosts the match. Your bracket isn’t drawn in advance because it can’t be. Your path is re-earned every single round based on where you sit and who’s left standing.
This is the part I can actually get on board with. In most American playoff brackets, you can back into a soft path if the chaos breaks right above you. Reseeding kills that. Finish high in the table and survive, and you’re rewarded with homefield and should, in theory, play a weaker opponent every round. It makes the regular season matter more, not less.
Proposed Format · 2027–28 Season
MLS Cup Playoffs
20 teams · one table · top-8 double chance · reseeded every round
How it works
- Seeds 13–20 open in the Play-In. Four winners survive.
- They join seeds 9–12 in the Wild Card round.
- The top 8 get a double chance in Round 1: win and you skip to the quarterfinals, lose and you drop into Round 2 — but you're still alive.
- From the Wild Card on, every round reseeds. Highest surviving seed draws the lowest and hosts. No fixed bracket — your path is earned each round, not drawn in advance.
Reading the graphic
A ↻ Reseed pool means those teams aren't locked into a matchup. Once the round's participants are set, MLS re-ranks them by seed and pairs highest-vs-lowest. That's why the matchups downstream read ? v ? — they genuinely can't be known until the prior round finishes.
The red-cornered games in Round 1 are your top-8 double-chance matchups. Everything else is single elimination.
So is this good or bad?
Both? I think it depends on where you sit.
The case for: more teams playing for something in April, playoffs moved to May when they aren’t fighting the NFL for attention, a reseeding system that genuinely rewards the best regular season teams, and the double-chance that a 70 point season isn’t erased by one cold night. That may actually be the real answer to the “regular season doesn’t matter.”
The case against: its still two-thirds of the league getting into the playoffs. Finishing 15th feels a little too much like an accomplishment. The age-old line of “a good season is reaching the playoffs” is going to be tougher for some fans (like FC Dallas) to swallow year after year. Also, just how long will it take for fans to truly understand this complicated system? Explaining the current one always felt like a core, this is going to be even worse.
Sure, none of this is set in stone yet. Details can shift. MLS could adjust (and they still likely will). But directionally, this is where MLS is going. Bigger. Built for TV. And hopefully more meaningful games late in the year.
For a Dallas team that’s spent plenty of seasons fighting for its postseason life, a 20-team field is, frankly, a lifeline worth wanting.
Whether it’s a lifeline worth deserving is a different conversation. And we’ll have that one when the time comes.
