2026 will see the reintroduction of LA Astra and a split back into Conferences
December 16, 2025 by Jenna Weiner in News
Ahead of the league’s fifth full season, the Western Ultimate League announced their 2026 season schedule. Following the formal return of Los Angeles Astra to the WUL in October, the eight-team roster will once again split into two conferences – as was the case in both 2023 and 2024 – with the top two teams from each conference making it to Championship Weekend.
The 2026 WUL Season Overview is here! 🥳
This is going to be the BIGGEST and BEST season in WUL history 🙌
8 teams, 32 regular season games, all culminating in an epic championship weekend! (Stay tuned for location!)
📺 Stream EVERY game live on WUL YouTube! pic.twitter.com/AUX9GWNCY5
— Western Ultimate League (@WULeague) December 12, 2025
Like in 2023, when the WUL last had a full complement of eight teams, each squad will play eight regular season games in 2026 over the span of an 11-week season. Six games will be against in-conference competition with the remaining two played against out-of-conference opponents. The conferences, now North and South rather than Northwest and Southwest, have a similar makeup to their prior iterations, with Oregon Soar replacing Oregon Onyx and the other seven teams remaining the same.
North Conference Teams: Colorado Alpenglow, Oregon Soar, Seattle Tempest, and Utah Wild
South Conference Teams: Arizona Sidewinders, Bay Area Falcons, Los Angeles Astra, and San Diego Super Bloom
The season kicks off the weekend of March 13-15, with Championship Weekend held the weekend of June 13-14 in a location yet to be determined.
Some notable schedule highlights:
- While the WUL has fully moved away from the “mini-tournament” weekends that defined their first two seasons, seven of the eight teams now have roadtrip double-headers, with reigning champions Super Bloom the only exceptions.
- As has been the case each of the past three seasons, Week One offers up a rematch of the previous season’s final, with the Bay Area flying south to face off against San Diego.
- The Falcons’ SoCal sojourn, where they’ll play both San Diego and LA, is the first of five straight weekends with double-headers.
- Week One also offers the only out-of-conference matchup in the first half of the season, with Utah going on the road to face Arizona as both teams look to bounce back from missing Championship Weekend last year.
- From Weeks Two through Five, the entire North Conference will each get their shot at taking down their conference opposition on the road, starting with Colorado then Oregon and closing with Utah then Seattle.
- Astra’s return to the WUL starts on a slow roll, as LA only plays three games over the course of the first six weeks of the season, before picking things up with their own road double-header in Week Seven against Arizona and Utah.
- San Diego’s recompense for not playing two games in a weekend at any point in the season? A stretch of four straight games to close out their campaign, including a trip to Seattle that’s the longest away trip any team will take this year.
- After a bye week the weekend of May 22-24, every team will be in action in Week 11 to cap off the regular season before a two-week break ahead of Championship Weekend.
