Another New York City FC season got snuffed out at Citi Field, the fourth time in the club's history that they've played their last meaningful match of a calendar year in the baseball stadium in Queens.
The 1-1 draw with CF Montréal that sealed the club's playoff-free fate also might have been the very last time New York City FC plays at Citi Field. They won't be in the 2026 MLS Cup Playoffs, and the 2027 sprint season has six of seven home matches scheduled for Yankee Stadium, so it's very possible we don't see a NYCFC home match played in Queens again until July 17, 2027, when Etihad Park opens its doors.
Even if there's another one-off match to be played at Citi Field before the soccer stadium across the street from it opens, the era of New York City FC calling Citi its second home is over. The Montréal match was the 35th time NYCFC has hosted at Citi Field, and 2026 was the fifth straight season in which the club played five or more home matches at the stadium.
Yankee Stadium is getting a proper going-away tour, with a big final match in the Bronx against Red Bull New York set to close out the last pre-Etihad Park season (even if it's only 14 games) in NYCFC history.
There was no such fanfare for Citi Field, even if it hosted more NYCFC home matches than any non-Yankee Stadium venue, including some of the more significant games played by the team going back to the 2019 season. With the curtain falling on Citi Field for possibly for the last time last weekend, let's go back through some of NYCFC's history and its highs and lows while hosting at Citi Field.
Andrew Leigh
Citi Field and NYCFC: By the numbers
After 35 games played at Citi, New York City FC holds an all-time, all-competitions record of 15W-9D-11L with 47 goals scored and 43 goals conceded across those 35 matches.
| Season | Played | Wins | Draws | Losses | Goals For | Goals Against | Goal Difference | Avg. Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 20,113 |
| 2019 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -1 | 19,829 |
| 2022 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 16,759 |
| 2023 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 10 | 9 | 1 | 19,617 |
| 2024 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 12 | 9 | 3 | 22,484 |
| 2025 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 6 | -1 | 27,598 |
| 2026 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 10 | -3 | 18,885 |
| Totals | 35 | 15 | 9 | 11 | 47 | 43 | 4 |
Their biggest margin of victory ever at Citi was the 3-0 win over Inter Miami CF earned during the 2022 MLS Cup Playoffs, while their biggest margin of defeat also came at the hands of Inter Miami, when Lionel Messi's eventual MLS Cup-winning 2025 squad came to Queens and won 4-0 last September.
That 4-0 loss to Inter Miami also represented the biggest crowd ever assembled to watch NYCFC play at Citi Field. The announced attendance was 40,845 for that rainy September 2025 night with Messi, Luis Suárez, and Rodrigo De Paul all in town, blowing by the second-biggest announced crowd for NYCFC at Citi, which was an announced attendance of 30,804 when NYCFC won 2-0 in the Hudson River Derby played on May 17, 2025.
5 Highest NYCFC Attendance Numbers at Citi Field
| Date | Opponent | Final | Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9/24/2025 | Miami | 0-4 L | 40,845 |
| 5/17/2025 | Red Bull NY | 2-0 W | 30,804 |
| 5/18/2024 | Red Bull NY | 2-1 W | 30,731 |
| 11/23/2024 | Red Bull NY | 0-2 L | 24,891 |
| 10/18/2025 | Seattle | 1-2 L | 24,832 |
The Hudson River Derby was a serious draw the few times it came to Flushing, Queens. That November 2024 win for the Red Bulls was in the MLS Cup Playoffs, and remember, the stadium was limited to a maximum capacity of 25,000 fans for that Eastern Conference Semifinal because Citi Field was in the midst of undergoing a "winterization," and thus the upper decks of the stadium were closed off to spectators.
Overall, in the 35 matches played, a group of games that includes mainly MLS regular season fixtures but also one Leagues Cup game and four in the MLS Cup Playoffs, NYCFC averaged 20,877 fans per match played at Citi, a total of 730,722 tickets sold across the 35 times playing there. The crowd numbers at Yankee Stadium didn't deviate too much from those at Citi Field, with games in the Bronx hovering between a 20,000-23,000 average per season once the team began to play in Queens with regularity from 2022 season through to today.
The 2026 season represented NYCFC's worst on-field body of work at Citi Field in club history, just one win earned from seven matches played in Queens.
Maybe they missed the presence of the all-time leading NYCFC goalscorer in matches played at Citi Field? That would be Alonso Martínez, who scored seven career goals at Citi Field (regular season and playoffs combined) and with all those scored during the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
Santiago Rodríguez scored six goals in Queens, putting him second on the Citi scorers ranking, followed by Nicolás Fernández Mercau and Gabriel Pereira, each with four goals, then Julián Fernández rounds out the Top 5 with three career NYCFC goals at Citi.
David Villa scored the first goal, and the second goal, for NYCFC at Citi Field in the club's first game there in 2017, while Andrés Perea, as it stands, scored the club's last goal at this particular Queens stadium when he took advantage of a mistake at the back by the Montréal goalkeeper in 2026's last match at the stadium.
Early excitement, playoff disappointment
Since David Villa opening the NYCFC scoring in Queens was mentioned, let's roll the clock back to October 22, 2017 for that first-ever NYCFC match played at Citi Field, a 2-2 draw with Gregg Berhalter's Columbus Crew, the same team that would go on to knock NYCFC out of the first round of the MLS Cup Playoffs in which they competed that season, the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
