United Soccer League plans to bring promotion and relegation to its growing ecosystem of soccer leagues, the league confirmed today following an initial report from The Athletic's Paul Tenorio.
USL owners held a vote on the issue this week and a supermajority approved a plan to introduce promotion and relegation to coincide with the launch of the organization's new Division I-sanctioned men's league, which would reportedly now begin play in 2028, according to The Athletic.
A freshly launched USL Division One league would sit atop the pyramid above the Division II USL Championship and Division III USL League One, with teams then promoted and relegated between the three competitions.
Michael Battista
The Athletic cites the positive response to the recent USL Division One announcement as part of the reason USL owners were finally ready to commit to promotion and relegation after years of flirting with the system. The specifics of how USL will implement its version of promotion and relegation – how many teams face the drop each season, the financial implications of going up or down the pyramid, etc. – are yet to be finalized as of the reporting of this vote.
Also still to be finalized: The teams that will make up the initial USL Division One field atop the trio of USL leagues. That league and its teams would have to meet the strict Professional League Standards for Division I teams set out by the US Soccer Federation, which include things like home stadiums with 15,000 capacity minimums and high financial standards for ownership groups, among other specific benchmarks.
The initial reports about USL Division One mentioned that multiple existing teams will likely move up from the USL Championship into the new first-division league, with Louisville, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Las Vegas mentioned as the markets most likely to have their existing teams jump to the new league from the start. John Morrissey of USL Tactics did a thorough piece last summer on how he thinks USL's existing and planned teams can be split among the three divisions, which is recommended reading as you consider USL's Pro/Rel future.
John Morrissey
USL has been flirting with this big shift toward promotion and relegation for years. Back in 2023, this same vote among USL owners on implementing promotion and relegation was reportedly set to happen. That vote never materialized in 2023, though it didn't dissuade USL, its leaders, and its team owners from continuing to vocally express interest in a future that included promotion and relegation.
A recent trial balloon from the organization looked to be the expanded USL Jägermeister Cup. That competition debuted in 2024 and comes back in 2025 with all 38 teams from the USL Championship and League One, what USL calls the "first time an American soccer league has established its own inter-league cup between two different professional divisions."
They've not shied away from cross-league matches and now appear ready to fully embrace an approach to running soccer competitions that's common everywhere else in the world save for here in the United States.
Major League Soccer, the only men's Division I league in the country since its inception in 1996, has no promotion or relegation and appears to have no plans to dabble in it anytime soon. The competition innovation under heaviest consideration in MLS circles right now is a schedule shift, moving the league calendar to align with those of the major European leagues.
With the USL Division One announcement and now this blockbuster vote of approval for a future with Pro/Rel between three leagues, USL is laying out a clear blueprint for distinguishing itself from MLS in the vital years immediately following the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted here in the United States, plus Mexico and Canada.
They still have lots of major hurdles to clear to make promotion and relegation a reality, but every indication continues to be that USL and its owners are dead-set on trying it. A certain vocal, extremely online subset of soccer fans here in America have loudly shouted for years and years that a lack of promotion and relegation is the one big thing holding the sport and its domestic leagues back among fans and prospective fans. Their grand theory for "fixing" American soccer might finally get put to the real-life test come 2028.
Michael Battista
