Canada has three teams in Major League Soccer. It also has its own entirely separate top-flight league, running at the same time, with its own champions and its own history. Most countries have one first division. Canada, unusually, has two, and the 2026 Canadian Premier League season is proof that the smaller of the two is worth paying attention to.
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Eight Clubs, One Growing League
The CPL kicked off its eighth season in April, running through to a playoff final in November, and this year it features eight clubs spread across the country. Forge FC of Hamilton enter as reigning CPL Shield holders, while Atlético Ottawa arrive as defending champions after beating Cavalry FC in a snow-soaked final at TD Place last November. Cavalry FC, Pacific FC, Vancouver FC, and HFX Wanderers round out the established core, while Toronto’s club enters the season under a new name, Inter Toronto FC, following its rebrand from York United. The biggest story of the year is the arrival of FC Supra du Québec, a new club based near Montreal and the league’s first side built entirely around Quebecois players, giving the CPL a genuine presence in la belle province for the first time.
Why Canada Has Two Top Divisions
The obvious question is why Toronto FC, the Vancouver Whitecaps, and CF Montréal are not simply part of this system. The answer comes down to timing. All three clubs joined MLS between 2007 and 2012, years before the CPL existed at all. Canada, at that point, had no domestic professional league of any real standing, so ambitious clubs looked south instead. The Whitecaps and the Montreal Impact, as CF Montréal was then known, actually predate MLS itself, having played in lower-division American leagues since the 1980s and 1990s respectively. By the time the CPL finally launched in 2019, those three clubs were already deeply embedded in MLS, with its larger revenues, larger stadiums, and continental profile. There has never been a serious push to move them, and given the financial gap, there probably never will be.
Where the Two Worlds Collide
The interesting part is that these two separate systems are not walled off from each other. Every year, CPL and MLS clubs from Canada meet in the Canadian Championship, a domestic cup that also decides which Canadian club reaches CONCACAF’s continental competition. This is where the CPL has quietly built its credibility. Cavalry FC became the first CPL side to beat an MLS opponent when they knocked out the Vancouver Whitecaps, and in 2024, both Cavalry and Forge defeated Canadian MLS opposition away from home in the same tournament. These were real results, not flukes, and they forced a reassessment of how big the gap between the two leagues actually is. Increasingly, it looks smaller than assumed.
A League Built Differently
Part of what makes the CPL fascinating is how deliberately it was designed. The league operates with a salary cap and roster rules that push clubs to develop young Canadian talent rather than import expensive foreign rosters, and it has quietly become a legitimate pipeline into Canada’s national team setup. Attendance is modest compared to MLS crowds, but the intimacy is part of the appeal. Grounds like Hamilton’s Tim Hortons Field and Halifax’s Wanderers Grounds pack committed supporters close to the pitch, producing an atmosphere a half-full MLS stadium often cannot match. The league has also used its size to experiment, becoming the first senior competition in the world to trial a new offside interpretation alongside FIFA this season, and rolling out enhanced video review technology across its stadiums.
Following the Season From Here
With the World Cup having brought unprecedented attention to Canadian soccer this year, the CPL is arguably better placed than ever to convert new fans into regular followers. The season runs deep into the fall, with playoffs stretching toward late November, and the standings this year are as tight as they have been in the league’s history, with Cavalry chasing another shot at the title they narrowly missed last season. For fans who have found themselves newly invested in Canadian soccer and want to follow the action, odds, and storylines around both the CPL and the wider Canadian sports calendar, browsing options for Canadian sports betting is a natural next step for anyone looking to engage more closely with the league’s stretch run.
Canada’s soccer landscape will likely never be a single, tidy pyramid the way England’s or Germany’s is. But that split identity, one foot in MLS, one in a homegrown league finding its own voice, has produced something genuinely interesting to watch. The CPL is no longer just Canada’s alternative to Major League Soccer. Increasingly, it is a competition worth following in its own right.
