Gotham FC is moving to Queens, leaving Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey behind to make a permanent home alongside New York City FC at Etihad Park in Willets Point come the 2028 season.
Both Gotham and NYCFC officially rolled out their announcements of the arrangement on the morning of July 7, bringing confirmation to a setup that's been discussed, rumored, and percolating behind the scenes for years.
It wasn't clear how a venue-share between NYCFC and a high-level women's team would work and what it would look like for Gotham to set up shop in Queens, but we now have a clearer picture. Gotham will continue to be renting tenants, just as they were at the home of Red Bull New York, they'll just trade Harrison for Queens, though with no reported investment or ownership position taken by NYCFC or its owners.
New York City FC executives consistently expressed an intent to bring women's soccer to Etihad Park once it was open, going back years to the earliest days of publicly-discussed plans for the stadium in Queens. Their side of things has been clear, as the team has always stressed that the stadium wouldn't only be open and in operation for the 20 or so home matches New York City FC plays in a given season. The full-time tenancy of Gotham now ensures there will be multiple consistent soccer offerings in The Valley of Ashes in two years' time.
Etihad Park will open close to a year before Gotham moves in, with plans on track for the stadium to debut for New York City FC and MLS's first-ever "European calendar-aligned" season split between the late-summer of 2027 and early part of 2028.
In 2028, the stadium's first full calendar year in operation, the new Queens venue will be hosting full seasons for NYCFC and Gotham, men's and women's soccer matches as part of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, plus whatever other international friendlies and concerts that get booked.
The benefits to this for New York City FC and its owners are clear, but what will Gotham get out of its move to Queens? Gotham and NWSL alike have long seemed focused on capturing a bigger share of the New York City-based soccer fan populace.
Attendance for Gotham has improved in New Jersey in recent seasons, but still lags by NWSL standards, with the team averaging crowds around 8,000-9,000 in number over its last three most recent seasons, some of the most successful on-the-field years in the club's history. In 2026, those kinds of numbers put Gotham toward the bottom in terms of average home crowds, with only a handful of teams averaging smaller numbers.
Gotham and NYCFC alike are banking on the hope that a prime location close to multiple forms of public transportation, not just the PATH train, combined with the appeal of a brand-new arena yields a bigger base of regularly-attending fans than what's grown in New Jersey over the years. Will a change of scenery and a spiffy new venue capture for Gotham a new collection of fans they were missing out on while playing in Harrison?
Unclear, but it's clear that this relocation is a tough-to-swallow situation for those New Jersey-based fans following Gotham since its Sky Blue era. They will lose a team from out of their proverbial backyards, and will soon be asked to commute out to Queens if they want to keep following a squad that's been solely Jersey-based for as long as it's played competitively.
On the new stadium side, Gotham will get some of its own personal features at Etihad Park. The announcement of the move included mention that Gotham players will have their own dedicated locker room, and that the team gets exclusive "club merchandise positions" in the New York City FC store, plus some LED signage and digital videoboards that can be customized on Gotham matchdays, all meant to provide more of a unique "Gotham not NYCFC" in-stadium experience.
It's not quite a purpose-built stadium just for a NWSL team as exists in Kansas City, but part of Gotham's ongoing off- and on-field transformation includes the plan, announced earlier in June, for Gotham to take over the former training center of the Red Bulls in Whippany, New Jersey, with a multi-million-dollar renovation underway as it's transformed into a practice facility all Gotham's own.
Infrastructure is what can set professional women's teams apart, especially since courting star players at home and from abroad is part of Gotham's recent DNA under the leadership of Yael Averbuch West, the team's recently-promoted president of soccer operations.
Gotham has aspirations to be a flagship team inside NWSL, and the club's owner and governor, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, is quoted in the announcement of the move as saying in part, "World-class athletes deserve world-class environments, and this move allows us to keep raising the standard for our players, supporters and the game itself."
By doing all this now, Gotham also positions itself to benefit from the "summer of soccer" unfolding across the city in the present, and possibly another surge of interest in women's soccer even next summer, when the 2027 Women's World Cup gets played in Brazil.
The venue in Queens that Gotham will eventually move into in 2028 sits straight across the street from Citi Field, where next week, Gotham plays in front of a crowd expected to be well over 30,000 in The Queens Classic against US women's national team star Trinity Rodman and the Washington Spirit.
That will be Gotham's first-ever match in Queens, though not their first in New York City, nor their last in the city even next week. Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island is also now in Gotham's home venue mix, as it was the site of Gotham's 2025 Concacaf W Champions Cup clash with CF Monterrey, and it will be the site of a NWSL regular season match when Seattle Reign FC visit on Saturday, July 18 for an early-afternoon kickoff on the day before the men's World Cup final.
The week Gotham will soon spend playing exclusively in New York City now feels like an early homecoming. There will be lots for Gotham's leadership to figure out between now and when this move is fully made in 2028, but the club has a wave of momentum behind it heading into a years-long buildup to what will now officially be a full Queens relocation.
