Will Messi’s Inter Miami Face NYCFC in 2025 Opener?

Inter Miami will host New York City Football Club in Lionel Messi’s first game of the 2025 Major League Soccer regular season, a schedule unveiled Thursday showed.

The 37-year-old Argentine star led Inter Miami to the best record in MLS last season but the squad was upset by Atlanta in the opening round of the playoffs. Miami will open at home on February 22 against NYCFC — a match that falls between the team’s legs of a CONCACAF Champions Cup series against Kansas City on February 18 and 25.

Messi and his teammates will face their Eastern Conference rivals and visit San Jose, Houston, and Minnesota from the Western Conference. The David Beckham co-owned football club will entertain West rivals Dallas, Seattle, and the reigning MLS champion Los Angeles Galaxy in a feature clash on August 16.

The Galaxy will open the 2025 season at home against MLS expansion club San Diego on Feb. 23.

With its entrance, San Diego will make the 30th MLS club in Major League Soccer’s 30th season, which will see every club play 34 matches, divided evenly between road and home fixtures.

The league also will celebrate its inaugural season of 1996 with a rematch of the league’s inaugural match in San Jose hosting DC United on April 6. United will also visit the Galaxy on July 12 in a rematch of the first MLS Cup final.

The 2025 MLS All-Star Game will be played in Austin on July 23. But the MLS season will be disrupted from June 15-24 for the 32-team Fifa Club World Cup and the 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup to be played in US venues.

The teams that will represent them are Inter Miami and the Seattle Sounders in the Club World Cup. The 2025 Leagues Cup between MLS and Mexico’s LIGA MX teams will be played from July 29 to August 31.