New York City FC heads into this next round of Major League Soccer matches in uncomfortable territory, outside the playoff qualification spots after getting passed by Red Bull New York when they lost 1-0 at home in the Hudson River Derby.
The loss came as part of a larger stretch of one NYCFC win from nine MLS matches played, a slump that's thrown into question whether or not the club will qualify for the MLS Cup Playoffs at all.
MLS makes it as easy as any professional league to qualify for its postseason, with 60% of the league's 30 teams making the cut for the playoff field with a chance to win MLS Cup after each season.
With NYCFC currently on the outside looking in with only eight matches left in its season, the question on many fans' minds is likely: What is it going to take to get this team back to the MLS Cup Playoffs?
The answer looks to be a requirement of 12 more points at a minimum if New York City wants to be in the playoffs, with 44 the proverbial magic number for playoff qualification since the playoffs expanded in 2023 to include the ninth place team in each conference. Every team since 2023 that's matched or surpassed 44 points from 34 matches played has qualified for the MLS Cup Playoffs.
A fair number of teams with fewer than 44 points have qualified, too. Five out of the 12 teams to reach the No 8 vs No 9 Wild Card matches since 2023 came in under 44 points. The lowest point total for a playoff qualifier was 40 (Atlanta United FC in 2024), so a team still has a chance just by reaching or passing 40 points, as long as they're not in the 2025 Eastern Conference, which required 53 points just to finish ninth.
Ninth Place MLS Teams
Eastern Conference
2023: 43 points, 1.26 points per game, 10 wins (Charlotte FC)
2024: 40 points, 1.18 points per game, 10 wins (Atlanta United)
2025: 53 points, 1.56 points per game, 14 wins (Orlando City)
Western Conference
2023: 44 points, 1.29 points per game, 10 wins (SJ Earthquakes)
2024: 47 points, 1.38 points per game, 12 wins (Portland Timbers)
2025: 41 points, 1.21 points per game, 12 wins (Real Salt Lake)
It's only three seasons' worth of playoff qualification data, but that's how it has played out so far with this expanded field. As 2026 is trending, if you look at the table on a points per game basis, ninth place in the Eastern Conference is performing at a 1.27 points per game clip. Paced out over 34 matches, that would leave you with 43 points, again pointing to the importance of hitting 44 points and erasing doubt around making it.
Right now, New York City FC stands at 32 points from 26 matches played, picking up 1.23 points per game. A far cry from the team that got 1.65 points per game a season ago, and much closer to the 1.21 points per game earned in 2023, the last NYCFC squad to miss out on the playoffs.
The club now needs 12 points from eight games to get to 44 points, meaning it needs to improve on its season-long form and play at a 1.50 points per game pace to hit that magic number.
If you take 44 points as the end goal, then it's a question of how New York City gets there. Four wins out of the eight matches left to play could be the simplest win total to aim for, creating the most straightforward route to a likely spot in the MLS Cup Playoffs.
If four wins aren't attainable, and they might not be given the club's recent struggles, a 3W-3D-2L stretch to close out the regular season gets it done. So would the world's oddest unbeaten streak of 2W-6D-0L, which seems unlikely but could still happen, even if it might make for frustrating viewing.
Four wins feels like the target, though three could be enough if paired with a few draws down the stretch. Wins are extra valuable, too, since they're the first tiebreaker in the standings in MLS, so even if qualification is possible while finishing under 44 points, collecting an extra win could be the difference between ninth and 10th place.
When considering those required points and results over the final eight games, it's worth remembering that five of those remaining games are away from home for NYCFC, even if two of them, at Atlanta this upcoming matchday and then at DC United on Decision Day, are against clubs below them in the Eastern Conference table.
There's also the teams directly above NYCFC in the table to consider. FC Cincinnati (33 points, 1.32 PPG) and Red Bull New York (33 points, 1.27 PPG) have dealt with their own struggles and prolonged winless runs, not too dissimilar from New York City, while Orlando City SC (34 points, 1.31 PPG) started the season horrifically but has risen rapidly up the table since adding Antoine Griezmann after the World Cup break.
NYCFC can't control what goes on with the teams right above them, and they only play Orlando head-to-head out of that group of three closest playoff rivals. So the necessity of getting exactly 12 more points could fluctuate, depending on what happens elsewhere in the conference. That might not even be enough, should enough other teams around them catch fire and push the qualification line even higher than the current projection of 43 points.
If New York City FC wants playoffs, though, they should be targeting four more wins at minimum. The public-facing answer can be that they're targeting winning all eight of their remaining games and adding 24 more points to their total, but the reality is, they need only a slight uptick in form to get themselves in much better playoff standing.
The odds of their making the postseason, according to a pair of third-party playoff probability guess-timators, remain solid. SoccerDataVizer, which has a prediction model that runs 100,000 simulations of the MLS season, gives NYCFC a 55% chance of qualifying, while PlayoffStatus.com has them as an even more likely playoff contestant, rating them at 75% likely to make the field.
There's still plenty of paths to the postseason for NYCFC, but they'll need wins-multiple over their final eight matches if they want to reach the playoffs for a 10th time across the club's first 12 seasons of existence.
