Oakland Roots plan Coliseum exit after 2026 season, seek new home

Oakland Roots SC will leave the Oakland Coliseum after the 2026 USL Championship season, turning a short-term fix into another deadline for a club still hunting for something permanent in Oakland. The team said it will play the 2027 season at a different venue after deciding the Coliseum cannot function as a long-term home.

The reasons are blunt: event control, matchday flexibility, fan experience and operating costs. Those are not cosmetic complaints. They are the basic ingredients of a stable soccer home, and the Roots have now said the Coliseum cannot supply them in the way a growing USL club needs.

That is a sharp turn from the welcome the club received when it returned to the venue in 2025 as a temporary solution while it continued pushing for a permanent stadium site in Oakland. The first home opener there drew 26,575 fans on March 22, 2025, a sold-out crowd that set a club record and briefly made the Coliseum feel like a rebirth rather than a stopgap. Oakland then leaned into the venue as a short-term answer, with the club previously saying it would play at least 17 home games there in 2025.

But the constraints showed up fast. The Roots’ July 11, 2026 Prinx Tires USL Cup match against Spokane Velocity FC was moved to Merritt College because of recently announced cricket matches at the Coliseum, a reminder that the building’s calendar can still be pulled in other directions. The club’s 2026 schedule still lists multiple home dates at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, but the bigger trajectory is already set: this will be the final season there.

The stadium itself has been part of Oakland sports since 1966, when it opened before becoming home to the Oakland Athletics and the Oakland Raiders. With both franchises gone, the Roots’ exit raises the possibility that the Coliseum site could lose its last regular tenant, deepening the uncertainty around the broader Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum complex and the East Oakland economy that has long depended on event traffic.

The club has not given up on Oakland. It previously put forward Howard Terminal as a permanent stadium site, with a second phase that could expand capacity to as many as 25,000 fans. It has also kept alive other possibilities, including the Coliseum site and other locations around the city. What comes next has to do more than host games. It has to hold the club’s identity, pay the bills and stay put long enough to matter.