Leagues Cup, No Open Cup For Rapids In 2025

US Soccer. and MLS announced the plans for the Leagues Cup and the U.S. Open Cup today (as well as confirming all 3 Canadian teams will play in the Canadian Championship as normal).  In order to avoid too much load on any team MLS made the decision that each team would only play in at most two additional competitions per season in 2025 and 2026 including the CONCACAF Champions Cup.  They also announced how those competitions would be determined.

Obviously the top competition is the CCC and any team who qualifies for it will play in it.  That includes the Rapids in 2025.

For the Leagues Cup the top 9 teams in each conference will qualify.  The Rapids finished 7th last year so will play in the 2025 Leagues Cup.  Since Vancouver qualified for the CCC and are the defending Canadian Champions they will not take their place in the 2025 Leagues Cup and will be replaced by San Diego.

16 American MLS teams will qualify for the Open Cup.  Any team not who doesn't qualify for CCC or Leagues Cup automatically qualify for the Open Cup.  Any additional spots (7 this year) will go in order of the prior year's Supporters Shield standings, excluding any CCC teams.

So every team gets at least one competitions and this year two-thirds of the league get two.

MLS Next Pro ('2' teams) will also be in the Open Cup with 11 spots.  These will go to the two independent teams (not associated with a MLS club) and nine of the twelve teams who's first teams are not in the Open Cup themselves.  San Diego doesn't have a '2' team yet so they won't be represented at all in the USOC.  The other two teams not included were decided by the 2024 MLS Next Pro standings.  Atlanta was third to bottom in the East but the two teams below them (NE and NSH) have their first teams in the competition so they're not in the USOC.  Last place in the West last year was...Rapids 2.  So Colorado won't be represented in the Open Cup by either the first or 2 team.

Also as part of this news the USSF announced all the teams in the Open Cup.  Colorado will be represented by Harpos FC (USASA), Flatirons FC (USL-2) and the Switchbacks (USLC).  Harpos and Flatirons will enter in the First Round where they're each guaranteed a matchup against a fully professions USL-1 or USL-C team.  The winners of the first round will face off in the second round, and those winners will face the remaining USL-C teams including league champions Colorado Springs in the Third Round.

We're still waiting to hear the competition format of the Leagues Cup for 2025 and 2026, but we know the league won't be taking a break for it this year, the games will happen mid-week between league games.  It does appear that MLS has cleared a 10 day spot at the end of July/beginning of August to allow a couple of games to be played, the last weekend of July all the games are Fri/Sat and the first weekend of August there are no league games.