USL to trial Football Video Support in 2026 Cup run

The United Soccer League will trial Football Video Support in the final stages of the 2026 Prinx Tires USL Cup, putting a FIFA-backed review tool into one of the league’s highest-pressure competitions. The system lets teams request a limited number of match incident reviews using broadcast footage, a narrower model than full VAR.

That difference matters. FIFA created Football Video Support for member associations that cannot run VAR because human and financial resources are limited and too few cameras are available. Standard VAR systems require at least four cameras, while FVS is designed as a cost-effective, scalable alternative. In practice, that should mean fewer stoppages and a more targeted review process, with the biggest impact on the kind of decisive incidents that can turn a knockout tie.

The setting is no accident. The 2026 Prinx Tires USL Cup features 43 clubs from USL Championship and USL League One, began on April 25 and is scheduled to end with a final on Sunday, Oct. 4 at 3 p.m. The league announced Prinx Tires as the entitlement partner on Dec. 16, 2025. By placing the trial in the Cup rather than a routine league night, USL is choosing a stage where one review can reshape a season path and where referees, coaches and players will feel every pause.

FIFA has already pushed the system into competitive use elsewhere. It first detailed Football Video Support on May 18, 2024, and said it had been successfully trialled at the Blue Stars/FIFA Youth Cup 2024. On Aug. 29, 2024, FIFA said the tool would be trialled at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in Colombia. By Oct. 1, 2025, FIFA said trials had spread to various domestic competitions and that the system was operating at the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Chile, with more youth tournaments in Morocco and Qatar to follow.

That Chile event underscored the scale of the test. FIFA said the tournament ran from Sept. 27 to Oct. 19, 2025, used 54 match officials, including 18 referees and 36 assistant referees, and drew about 260,000 spectators during the group stage. For USL, the move reads like more than a tech experiment. It is a vote for a lighter-touch review system that could improve credibility without turning matches into long video sessions.

The league has walked this road before. In 2016, USL said VAR testing in select regular-season contests would begin with Red Bulls II against OCB as the first competitive match to use live in-game technology. This FVS trial fits that same pattern, with USL again putting itself on the front edge of officiating changes before a broader rollout is decided.