Mon. Mar 9th, 2026
Ted Ku-DiPietro dribble Colorado Rapids preseason schedule
Photo Credit: Spencer Baldwin

Commerce City, Colo. – The Colorado Rapids preseason schedule is out, the club announced Wednesday. The club will be spending most of the preseason in Florida with no trip to Mexico and will be playing four friendlies against MLS Eastern Conference teams.

Sources tell Burgundy Wave that the report date for players is this weekend. The team will be in camp in Palm Beach, Florida from January 13 to February 14. The preseason friendly schedule is as follows:

Friday, January 23 – Nashville SC 

Thursday, January 29 – TBD 

Saturday, February 7 – Columbus Crew 

Saturday, February 14 – Orlando City SC 

Sam Vines dribble
Photo Credit: Spencer Baldwin

All of these games will be behind closed door friendlies and will not be live-streamed. The club will have updates on social media channels. There is expected to be media availability around these games. After that February 14 game, the Pids kick off the 2026 MLS regular season on Sunday February 22 at Seattle Sounders.

So, what do we think?

I’m ok with the team not spending much time in Colorado or Santiago de Querétaro to train at altitude. It might take them a month or two to have a fitness advantage at altitude. No preseason food poisoning is a good thing, if Cole Bassett’s past comments are anything to go on.

Wells sounds like he has a complex system to implement. He needs to get familiar with the team. A month of two-a-days in warm convenient weather will help with that. The facilities in Palm Beach are good. The Rapids FO doesn’t like scheduling preseason games against Western Conference teams. The three scheduled opponents are good teams and will be good tests. Also nobody the Rapids have in cross-conference play.

It’s annoying that once again, it will be hard to follow preseason. I get that the Apple TV rules make it hard for teams to independently stream games. We’ll be reliant on what the club puts out, which could be curated. We might only get lineups and Rapids goal highlights. In past years, we haven’t gotten four minute highlight videos and no footage of goals conceded. There might not be footage to confirm our theory the team will be playing in a 4-3-3.

We don’t have a Rapids 2 preseason schedule yet. Expect a number of R2 players to be invited to train with the first team. Presumably, Erik Bushey and his group will overlap with the first team in South Florida for at least a week or more after the 13th.

COLORADO RAPIDS PRESEASON TRAINING CAMP ROSTER – AS OF JANUARY 13, 2026:  

GOALKEEPERS: Adam Beaudry, Zackory Campagnolo (Rapids 2), Nicolas Hansen, Zack Steffen 

DEFENDERS: Reggie Cannon, Noah Cobb, Lucas Herrington, Rob Holding, Ian Murphy, Keegan Rosenberry, Jackson Travis, Sam Vines

MIDFIELDERS: Paxten Aaronson, Josh Atencio, Cole Bassett, Ali Fadal, Wayne Frederick, Ted Ku-DiPietro, Alexis Manyoma, Hamzat Ojediran, Connor Ronan, Sydney Wathuta (Rapids 2)

FORWARDS: Alex Harris, Bryce Jamison, Mamadou Billo Diop (Rapids 2), Rafael Navarro, Dante Sealy, Kimani Stewart-Baynes, Darren Yapi, Donavan Phillip (2025 MLS SuperDraft) 

Read More: Five Questions for the Matt Wells Era

Zack Steffen mixed zone
Zack Steffen speaks to the media in mixed zone after a Leagues Cup match. Photo Credit: Spencer Baldwin

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