The Washington Spirit will play their NWSL semi-final at Audi Field after the club reached a deal to avoid staging the playoff game at Northwest Stadium, home of the NFL's Washington Commanders. The club announced late Sunday night that it will face the Utah Royals on Saturday, 14 November, at noon.
Audi Field has been the Spirit's full-time home since 2023 and hosted raucous crowds for the team's playoff run, including Sunday's 4-1 win that sent them into the semi-final. A Division III college football game between the Coast Guard Academy and the Merchant Marine Academy had previously been scheduled for that same afternoon at Audi Field, and ESPN had reported earlier in the week that the NWSL was preparing scenarios that could have sent the Spirit to the 64,000-seat Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, a venue the club has never played in during its 13-year existence, had both the Spirit and top-seeded Gotham FC advanced. The Spirit could not confirm whether the college football game has since been moved to a different location or date.
According to reporting a day earlier by The Athletic, the league had developed a contingency plan that prioritized avoiding early kickoffs over preserving home-field advantage for higher seeds, a factor that fed into the scheduling conflicts facing both Gotham and the Spirit this week.
The league also announced that Gotham's semi-final against the Kansas City Current will kick off at 3pm on Sunday, 15 November, though it did not announce a location. Gotham, the Shield winners, regularly play at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, and with the Spirit's semi-final now set for Saturday, Gotham is cleared to play in the Sunday late-afternoon broadcast window.
The remaining issue is the condition of the field at Sports Illustrated Stadium, which has taken heavy wear after hosting soccer and rugby matches in recent weeks and is scheduled to host a New York Red Bulls friendly the day before Gotham's playoff game. During Gotham's 1-0 quarter-final win over Seattle on Sunday afternoon, the field was patchy and sandy with visible brown spots. Reign captain Jess Fishlock described the field as "atrocious." Gotham coach Juan Carlos Amoros apologized for the conditions and said the club, which is a tenant rather than owner of the stadium, had tried to mitigate the circumstances without success.
"Let's be real, there's no way a playoff game should be played on that shit," Reign head coach Laura Harvey told ESPN. "I just can't believe they've allowed it. They knew it last week."
The league reportedly fined Gotham $10,000 for the poor field conditions during their regular-season finale on 4 November. Gotham's semi-final could instead be played at Icahn Stadium, a 5,000-seat venue on Randall's Island in New York City where the club has played several games in recent years.
Before the quarter-finals, the league said in a statement: "While some circumstances are outside our control, we've proactively evaluated multiple scenarios and their tradeoffs to prepare for every potential matchup, with the goal of minimizing disruption to players, clubs and fans while protecting competitive integrity. These challenges also reinforce why stadium infrastructure and meaningful control or influence over venue availability have been central to our growth strategy for years."
