Denver Summit FC hopes its first home match is historic.
The NWSL expansion club announced Monday that its inaugural home opener will be played at Empower Field on March 28, 2026. The Saturday match, against a to-be-announced opponent, will be at noon with broadcast details to be revealed at a later date. The 2025 NWSL season starts a couple of weeks earlier, and Denver FC will play its first few games in franchise history on the road.
Summit FC is shooting for a sellout at the 76,125-seat stadium, but the club doesn’t have to reach that number to break the single-game attendance record in NWSL history — for a match at Oracle Park in San Francisco.
“That’s our ambition,” Summit FC president Jen Millet said. “As we plan for this match, I think we’re cautiously optimistic. … That (NWSL attendance record) was just set this past summer, so we have our sights on that initial target. Colorado and fans in the community here continue to surprise us, and continue to support us, so once we pass that milestone, I think the sky’s the limit.”
Broncos president Damani Leech said the decision to have Empower Field host the match was a “no-brainer.”
“This stadium has not been short of a number of great moments, whether that’s CONCACAF (tournaments) or AFC championship games,” Leech said. “We talk a lot about Mile High magic… and we expect to see more of it next spring when we host this inaugural match.”
The club’s season ticket deposit list is currently at about 16,000. Season-ticket members can purchase additional tickets for the Empower Field match on Nov. 10. Club 5280 members can buy tickets on Nov. 11, and tickets go on sale to the general public on Nov. 12. The club’s had about a 65% conversion rate on its season-ticket deposit list, Summit FC owner Rob Cohen said, so there’s about 10,400 true season-ticket holders as of Monday.
Cohen added that playing the first home match at Empower Field was part of the club’s original vision, even before Denver was awarded an NWSL bid.
“We shared this vision with the league when we submitted the bid,” Cohen said. “I shared that with Damani then, and obviously, we didn’t have a deal then from the NWSL, but the Broncos (verbally committed).”
Millet said the team’s temporary venue, a 12,000-seat modular stadium in Centennial, is expected to be completed in April. If it’s not ready for Summit FC’s second home match following the March 28 debut in Denver, the club has contingency plans.
“We won’t get the rest of until January, and at that point we’ll match that up against the construction timelines and see where we’re at,” Millet said. “But the goal is that all our matches after this one at Empower will be out in Centennial. If you can think of (other local stadiums), we’re talking to them (as a back-up possibility).”
Millet believes that the home opener will be a “statement” for women’s athletics both locally and nationwide.
“The statement that breaking that record will send to girls and women across Colorado is that women are worth investing in, women are worth supporting and women are worth showing up for,” Millet said. “We really hope that message rings true when we take the pitch on March 28.”
After the Summit plays its first couple of seasons in Centennial, the club plans to move into a new, 14,500-seat stadium at Santa Fe Yards (Broadway and I-25 in Denver) in 2028. That project on the site of the former Gates Rubber Co., which will involve $70 million in tax dollars, was approved by an 11-1 vote by the Denver City Council in May.
But more approvals remain ahead to keep the stadium on track for construction. Meanwhile, Broadway Station development bondholders are displeased with what one bondholder described as a “significant breach of trust” in the city’s change of plans to now use the site for the Summit FC stadium instead of a transit-oriented redevelopment.
Cohen addressed that criticism on Monday, saying he believes those bondholders will see benefits from the stadium as well as the planned entertainment district that will be attached to it.
“I’m sympathetic to any investor who has invested in something and is hoping for a certain return,” Cohen said. “Obviously, those bondholders understood the risk that they took. I’d like to believe that the stadium is going to enhance their ability to get a return … even though it may not be the return they were hoping for, I still think it’s a positive move for them and I believe in time hopefully they’ll see that.”
Cohen said the club is still planning on opening the stadium in 2028, even though a long road remains ahead.
“We still have work to do with the City Council, we’re still in the process of negotiating the community benefits agreement,” Cohen said. “It’s challenging, like all projects in Denver, but we remain optimistic.”
As the club continues to make progress on the business end, Summit FC’s roster also keeps coming together.
The club has announced three signings so far, and general manager Curt Johnson said Summit FC has agreed to terms with seven additional players who can’t be announced yet because the NWSL season is still ongoing. Announcements on those signings are expected in the coming weeks as teams get eliminated from the NWSL playoffs, which begin later this week.
