With the 2026 FIFA World Cup wrapping up in Atlanta on July 15, Atlanta United resumes its season two days later with a match in Nashville. In November, the city will bid to host matches for the 2031 Women’s World Cup. In 2028, Atlanta will become home to its own National Women’s Soccer League club.
In other words, there’s never been a better time to be a soccer fan in Atlanta, especially a women’s soccer fan.
Meeting the moment
“If we can handle the Men’s World Cup, I think we’ll be just fine,” said Chelsea Fishman, recreational soccer player and founder of women’s sports bar Jolene Jolene.
Fishman believes the momentum from the Men’s World Cup this year will flow over into the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil. It could also help Atlanta land matches for the 2031 Women’s World Cup being held in the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Jamaica.
“The Men’s World Cup is kind of [Atlanta’s] audition for the Women’s World Cup, and I think we’re doing pretty well,” Fishman added. “It’s very possible that we can get one of the bigger games [in 2031].”
The US Women’s National Team (USWNT) has claimed more World Cup trophies than any other participant, most recently in 2019. All four trophies are on display at the new Arthur M. Blank US Soccer National Training Center, which opened earlier this spring in Fayetteville.
All 27 of the country’s various national teams, including the USWNT, will train at the new facility. However, the National Training Center is taking women’s soccer a bit farther, and intends to become an epicenter for studying women’s physiology in relation to the sport.
“The Kang Women’s Institute (KWI) is designed to bring together leading experts, researchers, practitioners, and organizations across the women’s game to advance areas that have traditionally operated in silos,” a representative from US Soccer told Rough Draft. “The National Training Center will serve as a central hub for the work by creating unprecedented opportunities to study and better understand the female athlete at the highest levels of the game.”
One research area of focus in on Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries in relation to women’s and girls’ soccer. ACL injuries often lead to early departure from the sport.
As a result, the National Training Center will be able to integrate research, performance, recovery, coaching, player development, and athlete care into the USWNT’s programs more directly and consistently. This includes gaining insight and collecting data to inform player performance development and injury prevention and recovery. Results and best practices will then be shared with the global soccer ecosystem.
Women’s soccer on the rise
“The US has proven to be a soccer country, as far as our women’s national team goes. [Women’s soccer] is our biggest national team of any sport. Anyone who’s been paying any attention at all knows ever since the 1999 Women’s World Cup, it’s just kind of been our thing,” Fishman said.
The 1999 final match saw the US beat China in a penalty shootout in front of 90,185 people at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The match set an international attendance record for a women’s sporting event and cemented the status of US players like Brandi Chastain and Mia Hamm as soccer icons.
Out of the success of the 1999 US National Team, professional and amateur women’s soccer leagues were formed around the country. Young girls like Fishman took up the sport, playing in recreational leagues after school and on weekends.
In addition to playing soccer as a kid, Fishman grew up attending Atlanta Beat matches. As a professional soccer team, part of the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA), the Atlanta Beat held its home matches at Bobby Dodd Stadium on the Georgia Tech campus.
“We would go with our teams and they would pick teams to be the ball girls and it was very formative as a child,” she said. “I remember at the end of the games running down and getting autographs.”
The WUSA suspended operations in 2003.
It’s been two decades since the WUSA league folded. Fishman gets excited when she talks about the return of a pro women’s soccer team to metro Atlanta in 2028.
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• Metro Atlanta becomes the new home of U.S Soccer
• All FIFA World Cup 2026 Coverage
• More Rough Draft Atlanta sports coverage
Decatur FC sets precedent
Support for women’s soccer in metro Atlanta has a strong precedent right now: its first Women’s Premier Soccer League team, Decatur FC, launched in 2024. Attendance at home games grows with each season, especially after Decatur FC went undefeated last year.
The team’s 2026 season wrapped up at the end of June and received a boost from the Men’s World Cup in Atlanta. More than 800 first-time fans attended matches in 2026, and Decatur FC’s returning fan rate nearly doubled from its 2025 season.
“While an unprecedented soccer calendar in Atlanta impacted our attendance this season, including the FIFA World Cup, the success of Decatur WatchFest, and numerous other events…we’re seeing several encouraging indicators that the long-term growth of the women’s game continues to accelerate,” said Decatur FC General Manager Joel Gould.
The success of Decatur FC continues to inspire the next generation of women’s soccer in metro Atlanta.
This year’s Path to the Pitch accessibility initiative attracted more than 140 girls during its first week alone, more than double the total registrations in 2025. Decatur FC’s Wednesday Night Lights beginner program averaged around 25 girls participating weekly last year. This year, that weekly average jumped to nearly 80 girls, aged 6 to 14 years old.
Jazmin Ferguson, who grew up in Conyers, joined Decatur FC as a defender in its inaugural year after learning that her former coach, Campbell Chapman, was starting the semi-professional women’s league close to home. The summer season allowed college athletes like Ferguson to play regularly and maintain game fitness outside of the academic season.
“As an athlete, I feel like anyone wants to be fully supported. They want to feel like they have supporters and fans, and I think that’s literally Decatur [FC] to a tee,” said Ferguson.
Ferguson called Decatur FC’s first year “surreal.” She credits the fans for that.
“There’s just so many little girls in the stands who want to get to know you and meet you and have an autograph signing,” she said. “We work a lot of camps and they love to say hi.”
“Just knowing someone is watching you and looking up to you for one tackle, one pass, one block shot — something so small to us is something so big to that fan base,” Ferguson explained. She points to the success of pro women’s basketball team the Atlanta Dream for hyping up interest in women’s sports and building fan bases for team like Decatur FC.
Strides in youth soccer
Youth soccer initiatives, including the American Youth Soccer Organization and Sons of Pitches FC (SOPFC), are also experiencing participation surges.
SOPFC teams prioritize play over competition, creating safe spaces for players of all ages and genders, co-founder Christopher Wedge said of the organization’s philosophy. Beginner-only leagues target people who have never played before, or who have not felt welcome in a league space.
“We see women who have a cultural connection to the game — generally African, Latin American, Caribbean. Dads would take them to go watch the game,” he said. “But they wouldn’t allow them to play the game. Those women are coming and now playing with SOPFC.”
Youth soccer players tend to drop out of the sport during their teenage years. Schools provide increased extracurricular options, and players may not feel supported by their peers, as academic environments emphasize other sports like football or basketball, Wedge said. This phenomenon is especially true with girls’ soccer.
As a volunteer-run organization, AYSO removes entry barriers. Tryouts aren’t required for kids interested in joining. If a team is dominating a game, AYSO coaches will mix up the teams to promote positivity in the sport, which leads to kids continuing in soccer longer and learning the sport more thoroughly. The coed, open-league platform at SOPFC also encourages girls and women to keep participating, even prompting a return to the game as teens or adults.
Beyond the pitch
But the excitement surrounding women’s soccer and finding avenues of inclusivity aren’t strictly restricted to the pitch. People like Fishman are carving out community spaces for women’s sports fans to gather.
“It’s not the same when you were forced to go to a Taco Mac and ask them to turn the channel, and then you’re the only people watching that game,” she said. “You know other people are going to be at Jolene Jolene for that game, and you know that game’s going to be on [the TVs].”
Along with the Atlanta Dream, USWNT matches draw the most customers to Jolene Jolene in Kirkwood.
Fishman isn’t against showing men’s sports at Jolene Jolene. This summer, the bar held watch parties for the Stanley Cup playoffs and 2026 Men’s World Cup matches. Jolene Jolene regularly screens Atlanta Braves games during the season.
“I’ve been very clear from the beginning that Jolene Jolene is not exclusively women’s sports,” Fishman said. “We’re in Atlanta. We’re in the South. We love college football. We’re going to root for our local teams.”
But Fishman will always center women’s sports at Jolene Jolene, arguing that the more people see women’s sports on TV, the more people realize its inherent entertainment value and its importance for inspiring new generations of athletes.
“[Women’s soccer] is very fast paced, it’s very aggressive and physical. These women came to play just as much as the men do, if not more, because they have something to prove,” said Fishman. “Until you actually sit down and watch it, you are just going to assume otherwise.”
