ORLANDO, Fla. — The surprise party is over for the Orlando Pride. With a dramatic turnaround last year, the league champions are now among the teams to beat as the 2025 National Women’s Soccer League season opens.

They begin defense of that title Friday night, when they will play host to the Chicago Stars (formerly the Red Stars after offseason rebranding) at 8 p.m. ET at Inter&Co Stadium. 

The club is urging fans to be in their seats at 7:45 p.m. ET for the 2025 NWSL Shield and NWSL Championship Banner-raising ceremony.

“We did really well last year and so I don’t think we need to change anything. The mentality needs to be the same, even more strong, because we know in this season everything will be more difficult,” Pride captain Marta said. “Everybody’s going to hunt after us. We need to deal with this and find a way to keep doing our best to keep making history for this club.”

This season is the club's 10th, and it is wearing a new kit to mark the anniversary.

In 2023, the Pride finished seventh in the standings and outside the playoffs, and before that they finished 10th. Their only previous postseason appearance came in 2017.

But last season Orlando went undefeated in its first 23 matches and won the NWSL Shield — the team’s first trophy — for the best regular-season record. The Pride capped off the record 60-point season with a second trophy, the NWSL title, after a 1-0 victory over the Washington Spirit in the final.

Marta, the six-time world player of the year from Brazil, scored 11 goals with the Pride last season and re-signed with the team through 2026 in the offseason. Another key to Orlando’s rise was the arrival of Barbra Banda, a Zambia international who finished last season as runner-up for the Golden Boot with 13 goals.

Kansas City Current forward Temwa Chawinga scored 20 goals to win the honor and was named the league’s most valuable player. The Pride defeated the Current 3-2 in the semifinals last year.

“We’ve changed the narrative now,” Orlando coach Seb Hines said. “We were always known as this underdog. And we always had something to prove. Now we’ve proven that we’re a good team, a championship team. It’s fulfilling those expectations now, holding ourselves to a very high standard, being the No. 1 team, the team that everyone wants to beat.”

The team has also has extended the contracts of defender Cori Dyke and 2024 NWSL Defender of the Year Emily Sams through the 2027 season. It also exercised a mutual option for forward Ally Watt and removed defender Rafaelle and midfielder Grace Chanda from the season-ending injury list.

The start of the new season comes with a variety of changes in the league.

No more draft starting this season

The NWSL eliminated its college draft last fall as part of the collective bargaining agreement with its players’ union. The NWSL is the first major professional sports league in the United States to do away with a draft.

This season, players and teams alike are navigating the new reality, with one general manager calling it the “wild west.” The league, in turn, is looking at new ways to identify and develop talent.

“I think time will tell the resources that our clubs need to be able to make their scouting processes more sophisticated,” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said. “It’s created a really important dialogue at our board level about investing in the path to pro, which I think is going to be the next chapter of this league’s growth. It sort of goes hand in hand with the idea of not having a draft and having full free agency that you need to shore up the foundation of your strategy to bring talent into the league.”

Big moves in the offseason

There were some significant player moves in the offseason. Most notable was the transfer of U.S. women’s national team defender Naomi Girma from the San Diego Wave to Chelsea for a record fee of $1.1 million. Fellow defender Jenna Nighswonger departed Gotham FC for Arsenal.

The Pride acquired defender Oihane Hernández on an immediate transfer from Real Madrid Femenino for an undisclosed fee and have signed the former World Cup winner to a two-year contract through the 2026 season, with an option for 2027. The Pride has transferred forward Adriana to Al Qadsiah FC of Saudi’s Women’s Premier League for what the club said was a franchise-record fee. 

There were two big trades within the league, too. Lynn Biyendolo was traded from Gotham to the Seattle Reign, and Jaedyn Shaw went from the Wave to the North Carolina Courage.

Sponsorships surge

As the women’s game grows, so does corporate interest: Sponsorship deals in the NWSL jumped by 19% in the past year, according to a SponsorUnited, which tracks brand deals.

The Portland Thorns have scored major partners in Ring and Alaska Airlines. Dove is a new sponsor for Gotham FC. In the past few weeks, the league announced sponsorship deals with Google Pixel, Elf cosmetics and Alex Cooper’s Unwell platform.

“As a former college soccer player and someone who has long been a fan of the NWSL, I’m so excited to be kicking off this partnership,” said Cooper, who hosts the popular Call Her Daddy podcast. “This felt like the perfect fit for Unwell as we remain committed to not only supporting our community but celebrating women who are doing incredible things.”

Looking ahead

Boston and Denver are set to kick off in 2026, bringing the league to 16 teams.