Texas to serve as 2026 Concacaf W Championship host

It will be a showdown in Texas for the Concacaf W Championship. On Tuesday, Concacaf announced that the 2026 Concacaf W Championship will take place at Texas Health Mansfield Stadium in Mansfield and Shell Energy Stadium in Houston from November 27th through December 5th.

The 2026 Concacaf W Championship will serve as the qualifying tournament for both the 2027 Women’s World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics. The United States Women’s National Team, along with Canada, automatically qualified by being in the top 2 in the Concacaf rankings. They will be joined by Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Haiti, and Panama. The tournament will consist of an 8-team bracket that begins with the quarterfinals. The four quarterfinal winners will qualify directly for the Women’s World Cup and advance to the Concacaf W Championship semifinals. Accordingly, USWNT will only need to win their first match to directly qualify for next summer’s tournament.

The four quarterfinal losers will move to the play-in round, where the two play-in winners will qualify for the two Concacaf slots in the FIFA Women’s World Cup playoffs. The four semifinalists will compete, with the winners advancing to the Concacaf W Championship Final and the losers competing in the 3rd Place match. The two finalists and the 3rd Place winner will qualify for the 2028 Summer Olympics. Because the Olympics are being hosted in LA, the USWNT automatically qualifies as the host. Thus, if they finish in the top 3, the 4th place finisher will get Concacaf’s final Olympic spot.

The quarterfinals, semifinals, and play-in matches will be played in Mansfield, located in the south central part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, at Texas Health Mansfield Stadium. The 7000-seat stadium, set to open in June, will be the new home of MLS Next Pro side North Texas SC. Play begins on November 27th and 28th for the quarterfinal rounds, with the semifinals taking place on December 1st and the play-in games on December 2nd. The semifinalists will then head to Houston, where the Final and 3rd Place match will take place at Shell Energy Stadium on December 5th. The 22,039-seat stadium is the home to the NWSL’s Houston Dash and MLS’s Houston Dynamo.

The quarterfinal matchups were based on the FIFA women’s rankings, with the teams seeded 1-8 from highest ranked to lowest ranked. The USWNT will face El Salvador, who will make their debut appearance in the Concacaf W Championship, in the quarterfinals on Black Friday, which falls on November 27th. The other quarterfinal matchups will see Canada face Panama, Mexico against Haiti, and Jamaica taking on Costa Rica. The USWNT will face Jamaica or Costa Rica in their next match, which would be the semifinal round should they defeat El Salvador, officially qualifying for the Women’s World Cup in the process.

The full schedule for the 2026 Concacaf W Championship (times TBA):

Quarterfinals
Friday, November 27th (Mansfield)
QF1: United States vs. El Salvador
QF4: Jamaica vs. Costa Rica