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Guide Oct 17, 2026

How Connecticut soccer is organized, from town clubs to the pros

Connecticut has no team in Major League Soccer, the highest level of the sport in the United States. It does have a club at each of the next two professional levels, three clubs in national amateur leagues that play in the summer, and a youth game organized through the Connecticut Junior Soccer Association (CJSA). This guide explains where each one fits, using the leagues' own descriptions and the records this site keeps for every club.

The professional clubs

MLS has 30 teams, 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada, and none of them is in Connecticut. The next level down is the USL Championship, which U.S. Soccer classifies as Division II. The league had 25 teams in 2026, 13 in the Eastern Conference and 12 in the Western.

Hartford Athletic is Connecticut's USL Championship club. It was founded in 2018, started play in 2019 and plays at Trinity Health Stadium in Hartford. Through its games of October 16 it was 7th of 13 in the Eastern Conference, with the regular season due to end on October 24.

CT United FC plays in MLS Next Pro, a professional league MLS started in 2022. The league says it "completes the pro player pathway from MLS NEXT to MLS first teams" (MLS NEXT is MLS's youth league). U.S. Soccer lists it as a Division III league. Of its 30 teams in 2026, 27 were affiliated with MLS clubs and three were independent, CT United among them. In its first season CT United finished 7th of 16 in the Eastern Conference and won its first playoff game, 1-0 at Atlanta United 2 on October 16. Its season, game by game, is on this site's news page.

Summer amateur leagues

Below the professional leagues, three Connecticut clubs play in two national amateur leagues with summer seasons. In the U.S. Open Cup, U.S. Soccer lists both leagues' teams as amateur.

USL League Two had 158 clubs in 2026 and a regular season from May 3 to July 12. College players can play in it and keep their NCAA eligibility. Connecticut has two clubs in its Northeast Division. AC Connecticut, founded in 2011, played its 2026 home games at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury and Post University in Waterbury, and finished 9th of 10. Connecticut Rush played its first USL League Two season in 2026 and finished 8th.

The National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) began play in 2003. New Haven United FC, which joined in 2025, won its North Atlantic Conference in 2026 with a 6-2-2 record. It then beat American Soccer Club New York in the conference final and West Chester United in the East Region final, before losing 2-0 at Bristol Rhythm AFC in the national semifinal on July 25. A Connecticut club has won the NPSL before: Elm City Express of New Haven took the national title in 2017.

Youth soccer

U.S. Soccer lists CJSA among its state associations for Connecticut, and CJSA says it has more than 70,000 players across the state. Most of the clubs on its list are town clubs that carry their town's name. This site's directory, built from that list, has 170 clubs in 125 towns. Where the clubs are, county by county, maps them.

CJSA also runs competitions above the town level. The State Cup is, in CJSA's words, "a non-residency competition for premier teams", meaning open-roster teams that aren't limited to players from one town. Since the 2025-26 season, US Youth Soccer has sent state cup champions straight to its National Championships, without the regional round that used to come first. The Connecticut Cup is for residency-based teams, and the CJSA State League is, in CJSA's words, "open to both comp and premier teams".

Many clubs also enter teams in national youth leagues:

A club can have teams in several of these, so the club's own website is the place to check what a particular team plays in. The club pages on this site list the leagues each club names.

Age groups changed this season

Youth teams are grouped by age and written U9, U10 and so on. After a U.S. Soccer change announced in 2015, the groups followed birth years. For the 2026-27 season U.S. Soccer let its members choose between birth year and school year, and US Youth Soccer, US Club Soccer and AYSO moved to an age-group cycle that runs from August 1 to July 31. MLS NEXT kept birth years for its Homegrown Division and moved its Academy Division to August 1. Rules can differ by league, so ask your club which cycle its teams use.

U.S. Soccer also sets the largest game format for each age: 4v4 at U7 and U8, 7v7 at U9 and U10, 9v9 at U11 and U12, and the full 11v11 from U13.

Other adult and women’s soccer

A few more Connecticut teams play in national amateur leagues this site doesn't track yet. Hartford Athletic II and GZS Bridgeport FC are in the fall 2026 season of the UPSL. AC Connecticut and Hartford Athletic both have women's teams in the USL W League, which Hartford Athletic joined in 2026.

Where to follow

Sources

Corrected Oct 18, 2026: an earlier version said AC Connecticut plays its home games at Trinity Health Stadium in Hartford. Its 2026 home games were in Danbury and Waterbury.

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