On Monday, the New York Mets got mathematically eliminated from contention for a spot in the Major League Baseball playoffs. Pour one out for Mr. and Mrs. Met, if you find this development particularly troubling.
For the followers of New York City FC, another season of Mets failure now officially means three more chances to visit Willets Point, Queens, to watch NYCFC play and maybe to take a curbside peep at the progress being made across the way at Etihad Park.
Today, NYCFC officially announced that its final three home matches of the MLS regular season will take place at Citi Field. The month of October will now feature three visits to Queens, with matches against LAFC, Atlanta United FC, and CF Montréal coming to the big ballpark in Flushing.
🚨 SCHEDULE UPDATE 🚨
— New York City FC (@newyorkcityfc) September 16, 2026
Our match against LAFC has moved from November 6th back to its originally scheduled date of Saturday, October 17th, while our matches against Atlanta United and CF Montréal are now confirmed for Citi Field 🏟️
Member presale begins tomorrow at 9:00 AM,… pic.twitter.com/GWB1zQDfJ6
The biggest bit of rescheduling involves the marquee matchup with LAFC and its star-studded attack led by Heung-min Son and Denis Bouanga. That LAFC match has bounced around on the 2026 calendar like a ping-pong ball. NYCFC was originally set to host LAFC at Citi Field on October 17 when the MLS schedule dropped last November. Then it got inexplicably shifted to Wednesday, May 6, but that date got abandoned back in April once LAFC reached the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinals.
The rescheduled date was to be Wednesday, November 4, but that always carried the caveat that the match could be moved for a third time, back to Saturday, October 17, if either of the local MLB teams missed out on the postseason and opened up either Citi Field or Yankee Stadium on that autumnal Saturday.
Exit the Mets, enter NYCFC. Queens will be the team's permanent home starting in July 2027 when Etihad Park hosts its first MLS match, but it will also now become home for what could be three crucial matches as New York City tries to punch its ticket to the MLS Cup Playoffs.
Citi Field hasn't been the friendliest of confines for New York City this season. The club is winless there through four matches played, with a Queens record of 0W-1D-3L, the most recent loss being one of the team's worst of the 2026 season, when they lost to New England Revolution on a 93rd-minute goal. Even their one draw at Citi Field this year was a disappointment, considering it came when St. Louis City SC scored an equalizer in the 96th minute to steal a 1-1 tie.
The stadium has been something of a house of horrors for any non-Gotham FC team to call it home this season. In NYCFC's seven-season history of playing at least once at Citi Field, the club's all-time, all-competitions record at Citi currently stands at 14W-7D-11L with a +3 goal differential, so they've historically earned 1.53 points per game when playing in Flushing.
It's been rougher going lately, though. NYCFC is winless across its last six home games at Citi Field, going back to when they lost 4-0 to Inter Miami CF last September. By season, 2026 is their first to feature legit struggles while playing in Queens, though in both 2019 and 2024, they suffered absolutely brutal playoff eliminations, against Toronto FC and Red Bull New York respectively, while playing at Citi.
NYCFC all-time record at Citi Field, all competitions
| Season | Played | Wins | Draws | Losses | Goals For | Goals Against | Goal Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 2019 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -1 |
| 2022 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 5 |
| 2023 | 8 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 10 | 9 | 1 |
| 2024 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 12 | 9 | 3 |
| 2025 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 6 | -1 |
| 2026 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 | -4 |
| Totals | 32 | 14 | 7 | 11 | 43 | 40 | 3 |
Moving the LAFC match back into mid-October means that New York City will come out of the late-September/early-October international break with a big busy three-match week.
It starts with back-to-back extremely tough road tests against teams near the top of the Eastern Conference table, as NYCFC visits Chicago Fire FC on Saturday, October 10, then gets its first run-out at Inter Miami CF's Nu Stadium on Wednesday, October 14, before closing out the three-game week against LAFC in Queens. That's a gauntlet of a week if there's ever been one, and it might have a huge impact on NYCFC's playoff positioning.
The good news, though, is that the club won't have to make a trip across the Hudson River to pretend like Sports Illustrated Stadium is "home." Hosting teams in Atlanta and Montréal that are outside the playoff picture in Queens should be a boost, assuming that New York City can figure out how to get more positive results while playing across the street from its eventual forever home.
