It’s back to the Bronx for New York City FC in the 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs as the team today announced that it "intends to host home matches at Yankee Stadium" during the postseason.
This means both local baseball stadiums get a piece of the remaining NYCFC action this season, as Citi Field in Queens is set to play host to the team’s Decision Day regular-season finale against Seattle Sounders FC.
The venue for the Sounders match got confirmed when the New York Mets missed out on a spot in the Major League Baseball playoffs. Today’s news of playoff soccer at Yankee Stadium comes not long after the New York Yankees got eliminated from the MLB playoffs, thus clearing the way for NYCFC to go back to their most-used home stadium for their postseason.
New York City is guaranteed to host at least one home playoff match. That will be during the best-of-three Round One of the MLS Cup Playoffs, though all details of that match — opponent, date, and kickoff time — are still to be determined.
That’s because NYCFC can still finish as high as 4th Place, with home-field advantage for Round One, or as low as 6th Place sans any home-field advantage, depending on the results of their Decision Day match vs. Seattle plus results in matches played by Charlotte FC and Nashville SC.
If they finish in 4th Place, they’d possibly host two home matches during Round One, the first and the decisive third (if necessary). If they advance beyond Round One, the playoffs become single-elimination games, and NYCFC would have to match up against a lower-seeded playoff side in order to earn another postseason home game.
Home games have generally treated New York City FC well this season, with the team going 11W-0D-5L at home in MLS league play. At Yankee Stadium specifically in 2025, the team has picked up eight wins while suffering five defeats across all competitions while enjoying a +7 goal differential (24 g/17 ga).
The next MLS Cup Playoff match at Yankee Stadium will be the club's first postseason tilt in the Bronx since 2021, when Ronny Deila's NYCFC team dispatched Atlanta United FC 2-0 in the First Round of that year's playoffs, a win that started the run to that year's MLS Cup triumph.
Across the club's 11-season history, their all-time playoff record at Yankee Soccer Stadium stands at 3W-0D-2L with a flat zero goal differential (seven goals, seven goals allowed).
Andrew Leigh
They got wrecked 5-0 by Toronto FC in their first-ever Yankee Stadium playoff match in 2016, beat Columbus Crew 2-0 in the Bronx to earn their first-ever MLS playoff win in 2017 but still didn't advance on aggregrate (remember when the playoffs used to feature two-legged ties?), then actually advanced in the postseason for the first time ever by beating Philadelphia Union in the Bronx on Halloween in 2018 in the Knockout Round.
Since the win over Atlanta in 2021, every subsequent home NYCFC playoff match – in 2022 against Inter Miami CF, then in 2024 against FC Cincinnati and New York Red Bulls – went down at Citi Field in Queens.
It will be a long-awaited playoff return to 161st St. and River Ave. in the Bronx for the Boys in Blue once the dust settles on the MLS regular season. We'll update you with further playoff match-up coverage once the NYCFC playoff picture is clearer and we have fully-confirmed logistics for the borough's first postseason soccer in four years.
