The 2025 NWSL season is in the books, and for the second time in three seasons, NJ/NY Gotham FC lifted the trophy at the league's final. So, naturally, in our what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world, we must look forward.
The NWSL offseason is historically as eventful as the season itself. As teams look to fix their programs before the 2026 season, the coaching and general manager carousels are well underway, and player announcements will soon follow.
Is your team in a good place or tasked with solving a litany of problems? Here's one burning question for each team as the offseason officially begins for everyone.
- Gotham rides magic moments to win NWSL Championship
- NWSL faces litmus test to retain Trinity Rodman's star power
- GM Survey: NWSL execs raise concerns about salary cap
NJ/NY Gotham FC (NWSL Champions): Will their dominance go global?
The league champions have the shortest offseason of any team not only because they made it to Saturday's final, but because they will play their first official matches of 2026 in January at FIFA's inaugural Women's Champions Cup.
Of course, they wouldn't have it any other way, as Gotham's ownership has openly discussed its desire to be the best club in the world. Head coach Juan Carlos Amoros was already discussing that goal on Monday at City Hall in New York as the team received keys to the city: "We are never finished. Our next stage is we want to be the champions of the world in January."
This roster, as it stands, has plenty of talent, and Tierna Davidson will also return from an ACL injury at some point. Two victories in London would make them world champions, a title the NWSL's front office would love to have as well.
Ali Krieger was full of praise for Gotham FC and their manager Juan Carlos Amorós after their NWSL Championship win over Washington Spirit.
Washington Spirit (runner-up): Life with or without Trinity Rodman?
The future of the NWSL's budding star, and the league's steadfast support of its salary cap, dominated the week in a push-pull leading into the NWSL Championship, and the questions around Rodman's future still loom for the Spirit.
If the Spirit manage to keep Rodman (which increasingly feels against the odds), they will likely do so in a world where over a quarter of their team's cap goes toward Rodman. Is that sustainable for a team looking to make a third straight trip to the NWSL Championship match in 2026?
The trio of Gift Monday, Rose Kouassi and Sofia Cantore bring plenty of firepower to the Spirit with or without Rodman. Front to back, this roster -- when healthy -- is championship caliber, but zero goals scored across 180 minutes of championship soccer is something that requires reflection for the next time they reach this stage.
Orlando Pride: Can they keep this going?
Maybe the Pride would have succeeded in the retaining their 2024 title if Barbra Banda had stayed healthy. Returning a healthy Banda to the squad is atop Orlando's priority list, but that also assumes that nothing else around her changes, which is unlikely.
General manager Haley Carter has already departed. Carter helped orchestrate Orlando's turnaround from the NWSL's doorstep to a formidable side in 2023 and a Shield and Championship double winner the following year. Even with Banda out for the second half of the season, the Pride nearly returned to the final.
Carter's departure will inevitably come with other on-field changes. Such is life in the NWSL. Will the Pride be able to maintain consistency? And will Marta's age-defying magic continue?
Portland Thorns: Can they restore their glory?
OK, yes, the big question about the roster revolves around forward Sophia Wilson, who has a player option on her current contract or could otherwise test out a new opportunity. Her future is directly tied to the Thorns' future success. Portland's question, however, is about more than just a player.
After the Thorns' semifinal loss, captain Sam Coffey said, "This is not an underdog club, but this was an underdog team." Championships are the expectation in Portland, and although Wilson's absence and a spat of injuries serve as necessary context to their under-performance, Portland overachieved by reaching the semifinals. That cannot be the Thorns' identity going forward.
The talent is there in midfield, and certainly up top if Wilson returns. The Thorns need more depth in the back, but more than anything, they need consistency to return to their former glory. Whether the firing on Tuesday of Thorns coach Rob Gale is enough remains to be seen.
USWNT's Olivia Moultrie believes signing a contract extension with the Portland Thorns is the right decision at this stage in her career.
Kansas City Current (NWSL Shield winners): Can they finish the job?
Kansas City began the 2024 season unbeaten through 15 games, but finished fourth in a four-team race for the Shield. This season, they blew away the rest of field by 21 points to cruise to the regular-season Shield, but got upset in the quarterfinals. Now, coach Vlatko Andonovski is shifting to the sporting director role, meaning the Current will have a new coach next year.
They will also deal with the challenge of the Concacaf W Champions Cup for the first time, a competition they must win to get to the Club World Cup, which their owners have stated as a goal. That competition adds midweek matches and significant travel that most other NWSL teams don't have to navigate.
Temwa Chawinga is the best player in the NWSL. Kansas City's midfield is as good as any, and its back line is solid. This team has already proven it can win games on a regular basis in the regular season -- what they need is to build the 2026 team to win knockout games.
Racing Louisville FC: Will they add layers to the grit?
Louisville's Bev Yanez won 2025 NWSL Coach of the Year for dragging Racing out of the 9th-place curse and into the playoffs, where the underdog Louisville took the Spirit to a penalty shootout. It was the club's first playoff appearance and they nearly made the semifinal, but for pedestrian penalties in the shootout. Yet there is talent there, led by forward Emma Sears and midfielder Taylor Flint.
Both things can be true: Louisville was a very difficult opponent for just about every team because they could grind out results and win games that the eye test said they shouldn't, by striking on the counter through Sears & Co. But they also had a propensity to blow results late in matches, which cost them valuable points and forced them to clinch that maiden playoff berth on the last day of the season.
The next step is finishing the job in a big game.
San Diego Wave FC: Can they find a No. 9?
San Diego's 32.0 expected goals, or xG, this season was second-worst total among the top eight and worse than two non-playoff teams. They scored 41 in reality, but that was padded by a 6-1 drubbing of last-place Chicago Stars FC in an October meeting.
A Wave team with the creativity of Delphine Cascarino, Kenza Dali and Gia Corley should be scoring in droves, but the big question looming over this roster is about who steps up in the No. 9 role.
If they go out and find a world-class finisher good for double-digit goals, this is a championship contender, because they dominate the ball plenty already. If not, they will have to grind through results again.
Seattle Reign FC: Where's the spark?
The worst expected goals mark in the entire 14-team league this season went to the Reign, who produced 24.8 xG. By the graces of goalkeeper Claudia Dickey, who led the league in saves and goals prevented, the Reign finished fifth and nearly hosted a quarterfinal game. But the soccer was not always pretty.
Was it luck or brilliance? The numbers suggest the former, but there is a foundation of young players coming through the pipeline now at a club that has historically leaned on veterans.
The Reign still need to figure out who can score for them. The club obviously thinks that Mia Fishel is the long-term answer given the record cumulative investment they made in her. Jess Fishlock, at 38 years old, led the team with six goals in just eight starts this season -- an area of opportunity to be sure.
North Carolina Courage: Time for an extreme makeover?
Under former head coach Sean Nahas, North Carolina defined possession dominance in the NWSL, keeping the ball more than any other team several years in a row. It didn't work in the playoffs, however, and doubling down on that commitment early in 2025 brought a poor run of results that only changed once the Courage broke free of those shackles and became more comfortable playing direct.
Still, they found themselves in the awkward in-between space as they tried to figure out their identity. Their aggressive, relatively expensive acquisition of Jaedyn Shaw only to have her sit on the bench at times was a microcosm of that uncertainty.
Nahas was fired in early August, and Shaw left on a record transfer a few weeks later (and just played a pivotal role in Gotham's title run). Goalkeeper Casey Murphy has also departed for Boston Legacy FC via free agency. Manaka Matsukubo played at MVP levels despite all this.
The Courage will enter 2026 with a new coach, and right now they feel a little like a house with a great view that got gutted by investors, but sold before the walls started to go back up. There's potential there, but there's work ahead.
Houston Dash: Can they build around Ryan?
Yazmeen Ryan was the flashy offseason addition and the clear focal point in 2025. When Ryan was thriving, so too were the Dash. Frequently, that came through combination play with Delanie Sheehan, who also arrived from Gotham FC last offseason.
But Ryan led the team in scoring with just four goals, an output that she will need to increase and one that is far too low to qualify as a team's leading scorer regardless of who it is. (It was the lowest team-leading scorer tally in the league in 2025.)
There is potential in Houston, but they need more impact players around Ryan and Sheehan. That's OK -- it was year one of a massive rebuild after a disastrous 2024, so there was progress.
Angel City FC: Can they win?
Pardon the simplicity, but the obvious question is the question here. Los Angeles wants winners, and Angel City hasn't done that nearly enough. They have one playoff berth in four years as a club, and the only thing consistent since their launch in 2022 has been inconsistency.
Alexander Straus didn't arrive as head coach until summer, so 2026 will be his first full season with the team. A playoff berth is the absolute minimum requirement for a big-market team talking about championship aspirations.
The arrival of Hina Sugita will help his case, but the abrupt departure of U.S. forward Alyssa Thompson in September makes this a much more difficult offseason than anticipated. LA fans want to win, and if that doesn't happen, it will impact Angel City off the field, too.
Utah Royals: Will they be ready in March?
The same pattern has played out each year since the Royals franchise was revived in 2024: A horrendous start to the season leads to a strong second half. The problem both years is that those early months negated any hope of a playoff run.
Two years ago, that poor form cost Amy Rodriguez her coaching job just a few months into the season. Jimmy Coenraets had the backing of management in 2025, and the team had one of the best records in the NWSL after the summer break.
Now, they need to show up from the opening game, which means getting things right in preseason.
Bay FC: How will the hard restart go?
Like Utah, it's hard to not look at the first two years of this expansion franchise as time wasted. There has been major staff turnover, and there will be a new head coach in 2026 after Albertin Montoya stepped down. This team last won a game on June 7, going the final 15 matches of the year without a victory to finish level on points with last-place Chicago.
The next coach needs to overhaul both the roster and the expectations. It's likely going to require time, but there will be some expectation to start seeing early results.
Chicago Stars FC: A new lease on life?
There's only one way to go from here, as the saying goes. And to be fair to Chicago, they showed signs of real fight in the back half of the season, including a shocking 5-2 victory over Orlando in September. That game was played at Northwestern University, where the Stars will play their home games in 2026.
It's unlikely that Northwestern can sustain as a long-term move for the Stars in this NWSL landscape, but they needed a change on and off the field, and getting out of Toyota Stadium in Bridgeview, Ill., is a positive.
Martin Sjögren will take over as head coach ahead of the 2026 season to usher in further change on the field. Ludmila is world-class at times, and the eventual return of Mallory Swanson from maternity leave will be a game-changer. As ever, though, the Stars need to add depth.