With the smashing debut of a 30th member club, new records set for biggest transfer deal and overall transfer spending, a FIFA World Cup winner (times three) winning MLS Cup presented by Audi for the first time, and another full dose of its trademark unpredictability across the board, Major League Soccer dialed up the drama for its 30th anniversary season, wouldn’t you agree?
(For what it’s worth… if you need a television comparison, that's a longer run than 'The Late Late Show' and 'The Phil Donahue Show,' but a shade younger than 'This Week in Baseball' and 'WWE Raw.')
We all had plenty of meaty storylines to track all year, across all competitions, and things figure to be comparably chaotic again in 2026.
Here are a few of the biggest headliners from the season that was.
Traditionally, life as an MLS expansion team is treacherously tricky, with long to-do lists and a steep learning curve. So precious few outside the 619 and 858 area codes expected San Diego FC to make real noise on the pitch in 2025, particularly given the club’s declared commitment to a progressive, possession-based style and a long-range, player-development mindset as part of the Right to Dream network.
Boy, were we wrong! The Chrome-and-Azul hit the ground running and rarely stumbled on their first lap around the league, setting new expansion records for points (63) and wins (19) en route to first place in the Western Conference.
Slickly spearheaded by MLS Newcomer of the Year Anders Dreyer and the Danish international's 19g/19a (plus 4g/2a in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs), Los Niños charmed their bumper home crowds at Snapdragon Stadium, nurtured a raft of top young talent and fell just one step short of reaching the MLS Cup final.
After many years – too many years – in the wilderness, Chicago Fire FC finally returned to contender status, snapping a seven-year playoff drought and winning their Wild Card match vs. Orlando City.
Under the guidance of head coach and director of football Gregg Berhalter, known by the shorthand GGG during his time in charge of the US men’s national team, the Fire were fun (maybe too much fun) to watch, scoring and conceding goals in buckets via Philip Zinckernagel, Hugo Cuypers and rising homegrown Brian Gutiérrez.
Even better, CF97 also sealed a deal to build a gorgeous, privately-financed new home stadium along the Chicago River just south of downtown, slated to open in 2028. Has MLS’s sleeping giant awakened?
We’re accustomed to the Seattle Sounders competing for titles; the Rave Green have made it a habit since their MLS arrival. What’s unexpected about their run to the Leagues Cup 2025 trophy is the backstory of their engine-room linchpin.
Not only is box-to-box dynamo Obed Vargas way ahead of the age curve – the 2025 All-Star and MLSsoccer.com 22 Under 22 winner only turned 20 a couple of weeks before Seattle’s impressive cup final dispatching of Lionel Messi and Inter Miami CF – but he also hails from distant Alaska, which underlines the scale and strength of SSFC’s development pipeline.
Next, the Mexican-American midfielder will seek to surge into a spot on El Tri’s 2026 World Cup squad, just as his club comrade Cristian Roldan will for the United States.
When the Philadelphia Union parted company with longtime head coach and local boy Jim Curtin after missing out on the postseason in 2024, it felt like the end of an era. Many pundits duly predicted a substantial rebuilding process under new boss Bradley Carnell.
Yet the South African needed only a matter of months to have the DOOP squad humming again.
Backstopped by the league’s toughest defense and a re-dedication to their stinging, selfless press-and-counter identity, Carnell led Philly to a second Supporters’ Shield title (66 points) and earned Sigi Schmid MLS Coach of the Year honors for his work.
B.J. Callaghan, a longtime understudy to Berhalter with the USMNT and Curtin in Philly, got Nashville SC to play a tune during his first full season in charge.
Producing periods of marvelous soccer, the Boys in Gold got 40 combined goals from the Hany Mukhtar-Sam Surridge strike pair. Along the way, Callaghan helped marauding fullback Andy Najar spark a career renaissance and pivoted NSC towards the youth movement they’ve been needing.
The most tangible reward, though? The US Open Cup glory Nashville snatched out from under Austin FC’s noses at Q2 Stadium in that tournament’s final on Oct. 1, the club's first major trophy.
MLS Cup hangovers don’t come much nastier than the ones that befell last year’s finalists, the LA Galaxy and Red Bull New York.
Hamstrung by the season-long absence (ACL tear) of Riqui Puig and faced with more injury-related holes than they had fingers to plug them with, the defending champion Galaxy were all but out of the playoff race by June. Meanwhile, New York's North American pro sports-record 15-year streak of postseason qualification came crashing to an end, prompting sweeping changes in their technical staff leadership.
Along similar lines, Atlanta United fell well short of expectations despite more than $40 million in reported transfer spend in the two windows leading up to opening day 2025. The recruitment of Emmanuel Latte Lath and Miguel Almirón proved insufficient to book a playoff berth, cutting short the managerial reign of Ronny Deila and paving way for Tata Martino's return.
Speaking of out-of-the-blue thunderbolts… it doesn’t get much more surprising than Vancouver Whitecaps FC blossoming into one of the league’s most dominant sides under first-year boss Jesper Sørensen.
The Dane arrived with zero MLS experience and faced a raft of debilitating injuries that complicated his work all season. Yet he still guided the plucky ‘Caps to the Concacaf Champions Cup (via sensational upsets of CF Monterrey, Pumas UNAM and Inter Miami) and MLS Cup finals, and extended their mastery of the Canadian Championship to four consecutive years – all with much the same squad that was mid-table under Vanni Sartini.
And down the home stretch, at just the moment their charge might have faltered, German icon Thomas Müller swooped in from Bayern Munich, becoming the biggest signing in the club’s modern history and pacing Vancouver's best-ever playoff run.
The year didn’t start so great for the USMNT, who were still reeling from the 2024 Copa América underachievement that dropped the curtain on Berhalter’s tenure when they fell short of a Concacaf Nations League title defense in March.
Head coach Mauricio Pochettino’s response: No one’s place on any roster is safe, not even the brightest stars plying their trade in Europe’s top leagues. What really drove home his point was the bounty of useful talent he dug up in MLS.
Diego Luna, Alex Freeman, Max Arfsten and Matt Freese rocketed from relative outsiders to starters or starting-caliber contributors, while Seattle’s Roldan surged back into the reckoning and Vancouver's Sebastian Berhalter seized his chance.
It all added up to a respectable Gold Cup showing and a litany of head-turning friendly wins in the fall, steering the program back on course in the countdown to the 2026 World Cup on home soil.
LAFC made the biggest wave of the summer transfer window, luring South Korean icon Son Heung-Min from Tottenham Hotspur to Los Angeles in a reported $26 million-plus deal that smashed the MLS record set by Atlanta's Latte Lath just six months prior.
Even in their wildest dreams, the Black & Gold brain trust could scarcely have imagined how well Sonny would get on with incumbent star Denis Bouanga, though. Immediately striking up devastating attacking chemistry, the duo reeled off 18 straight goals at one point, a dominant force that thrilled crowds at BMO Stadium and beyond.
It took a triple post and some star-crossed penalty kicks in Vancouver to extinguish their playoff run, and smart money has LAFC in the MLS elite come 2026.
Lionel Messi and his old FC Barcelona pals Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets and Luis Suárez have transformed Inter Miami since the GOAT’s landmark arrival in the summer of 2023, securing Leagues Cup and Supporters’ Shield titles while elevating the organization to global status.
Yet for a living legend with a world-record 46 major trophies on his glittering résumé at the start of the year, MLS Cup was always the top priority, and the Philip F. Anschutz Trophy proved elusive during his first two seasons in pink.
Perhaps that’s why Messi – boosted by compatriot Rodrigo De Paul arriving midsummer – played like a man possessed for the back half of 2025, finishing with an absurd 48 goal contributions (29 goals, 19 assists) across 28 regular-season matches before hitting Super Saiyan levels in the playoffs.
His excellence proved irresistible as the Herons defeated Vancouver for their first league championship, validating the entire IMCF project. Along the way, the Argentine living legend took home Golden Boot presented by Audi honors and became the first back-to-back Landon Donovan MLS MVP.
