USA Will Head Group A at Sahlen’s Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park, Canada and Group B Will Play at H-E-B Park; Semifinals, Third-Place Match and Championship Game Will Take Place at Toyota Stadium
Miami (Sunday, April 8, 2018) – The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf) and the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) announced today that the 2018 Concacaf Women’s Championship, which will qualify three teams to the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France and a fourth into a two-game playoff with the third-place team from South America, will be played in three host cities: Cary, N.C., Edinburg, Texas, and Frisco, Texas.
Concacaf announced on March 23 that the tournament would be played in the United States and would take place from Oct. 4-17. The competition will feature eight countries divided into two groups of four. After round-robin play within the groups, the top two finishers from each group will move on to the all-important semifinals.
North American sides USA, Canada and Mexico have qualified directly into the tournament. As host, the USA will be seeded into Group A, while Canada will be the seeded team in Group B. The five remaining participants will qualify via the upcoming 2018 Concacaf Caribbean Women’s Qualifier and 2018 Concacaf Central America Women’s Qualifier.
All three first-round doubleheaders in Group A – which will take place on Oct. 4, 7, and 10 – will be played at the 10,000-seat Sahlen’s Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary. All three doubleheaders in Group B – which will be played on Oct. 5, 8, and 11 – will take place at H-E-B Park in Edinburg, Texas, a 9,700-seat stadium that is home to the Rio Grande Valley FC Toros of the USL and is one of the top venues in the league.
The top two finishers in each group will then cross over to meet in the all-important semifinals on Oct. 14 at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas. The Third-Place Match and Championship Game will be at Toyota Stadium on Oct. 17.
The 2018 Concacaf Caribbean Women’s Qualifier, set to kick off on May 5, will be disputed in two stages among 23 participating Member Associations. The participating Member Associations are (in alphabetical order): Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bermuda, Cuba, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands and US Virgin Islands.
The final round of Caribbean qualifying will be disputed August 18-26, among the first-round group winners. The top three finishers of the final round will qualify to the 2018 Concacaf Women’s Championship.
In Central America, the qualifying tournament will be disputed in Nicaragua from July 6-10, with the participation of the host, plus Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama. After round-robin play, the top two finishers will advance to the 2018 Concacaf Women’s Championship.
FOX Sports will present 2018 CONCACAF Women’s Championship coverage across the FOX Sports family of networks in the U.S., and the matches will be available to Spanish language viewers across the U.S. on the Univision family of networks. Rights holding broadcast partners across the Confederation will also carry the Championship regionally.
The Concacaf Women’s Championship will be the crowning moment of a year of women’s football in Concacaf that includes the Girls’ Under-15 Championship, the upcoming Women’s U-17 Championship in Nicaragua, and the Women’s U-20 Championship, disputed in January in Trinidad & Tobago. Those competitions together will provide access to championship international football for over 75 girls’ and women’s teams from more than 30 Concacaf Member Associations – with a total of well over 1500 women and girls participating.
2018 Concacaf Women’s Championship
Date: October 4-17, 2018
Site: United States
Teams: 8
North America (3)
Caribbean (3)
Central America (2)
Number of teams to qualify for the World Cup: 3 (Champion, runner-up and third place). The fourth place finished will dispute a home-and-away intercontinental playoff, with the third-place finisher of CONMEBOL’s 2018 Women’s Copa America. The winner of the playoff will qualify to the World Cup.
Competition Format: The eight participating teams will be sorted into two groups of four for the Group Stage. After round-robin play, the two group winners, plus the two second-place finishers will advance to the semifinals. The semifinal winners will automatically qualify to the championship final and the FIFA Women’s World Cup. The semifinal losers will dispute the tournament’s third place match for the last direct available ticket to the World Cup.
Concacaf Women’s World Cup Qualifying Ticket Information
Ticket information for the 2018 Concacaf Women’s Championship will be made available by U.S. Soccer once it is finalized.
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