The USL Championship announced its competition structure for the 2023 season on Tuesday, highlighted by each team playing every other team for the first time since 2014.
With the departure of the final MLS reserve sides, the 24-team league is divided into two equal conferences of 12 teams, and no team changed conferences. No teams were added or folded either.
The league will once again have a 34-game regular season, running from March 11 to Oct. 14, almost the exact same dates as the 2022 season. Home openers and full schedules will be announced in January 2023.
Each team will play the other 11 teams in its conference twice, once home and once away, while also playing the 12 teams from the opposite conference once apiece, six of them at home and six away. This is the first time teams will face every other team since 2014, before the implementation of conferences.
“The successful expansion of interconference play during the 2022 campaign showed the appetite both our clubs and their supporters have for a full, national schedule,” said USL President Jake Edwards. “We are extremely happy to expand on that success, while also keeping the home-and-home series that make the great rivalries across the league.”
Despite a contraction in the number of teams in the league, the playoffs have expanded to accommodate eight teams from each conference again after only seven teams made the cut in 2022. This was the first time the playoffs expanded since the league granted entrance to 10 teams from each conference when the league had a whopping 36 teams in 2019.
The playoffs remain single-elimination and will have a fixed-bracket format once more. That is a change from 2022 when teams were re-seeded in the conference semifinal round. The playoffs will conclude with the USL Championship Final sometime between Thursday, Nov. 9, and Monday, Nov. 13, 2023.
