The Columbus Crew host New York City FC on Wednesday night in a U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal that now feels like a line in the tournament’s history book. The 111th edition of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup has reached the last eight, and every club still alive is from Major League Soccer.
Orlando City and St. Louis City moved into the semifinals on Tuesday, leaving Columbus and New York City FC to fight for one of the final two places available. The Crew’s match at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field in Columbus, Ohio, is the only quarterfinal on Wednesday involving a club with prior Open Cup championship pedigree among the four teams in action. Columbus won the competition in 2002.
The other Wednesday quarterfinal sends the Colorado Rapids against the San Jose Earthquakes at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado. Together, the four MLS clubs playing on Wednesday are chasing a tournament run that could shape the sport’s season beyond one night. The winner of the U.S. Open Cup earns a place in the Concacaf Champions Cup, and that incentive has helped make the tournament a proving ground for clubs looking for more than a domestic trophy.
Los Angeles FC won the cup in 2024 and Nashville SC followed in 2025, which means Colorado, New York City FC, San Jose and St. Louis City are aiming to deliver a third straight first-time champion. That possibility says as much about the current balance of power as any bracket line. Since 1996, MLS teams have won all but one U.S. Open Cup, with the Rochester Rhinos’ victory over the Colorado Rapids in the 1999 final standing as the lone exception in that span.
The tournament’s long memory stretches back to 1913, when the first U.S. Open Cup kicked off. It has been played every year since then except for 2020 and 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down. The open format, which welcomes U.S.-based amateur and professional clubs, has produced different kinds of runs over the years. Bethlehem Steel won five U.S. Open Cups in the tournament’s first 13 years, but folded four years after its last championship in 1926. The National Association Football League folded in 1921 and was effectively replaced by the American Soccer League, which later shut down in 1933 during the Great Depression.
The modern field is cleaner and more predictable, but it is also more exclusive. Indy's Eleven reached the 2024 semifinals as a USL side, Sacramento Republic FC got to the 2022 final, and FC Cincinnati reached the 2017 semifinals before joining MLS in 2019. Those runs now feel like exceptions from another era, because the current quarterfinals are all MLS and the bracket has already cut itself down to that reality. All quarterfinal matches will stream on Paramount+, while CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo Network will air select games.
For Columbus, the matchup with New York City FC is about more than home field. It is a chance to extend the one U.S. Open Cup title in the club’s history and keep alive the possibility that a familiar contender can still own a tournament built to create surprises. For New York City FC, it is another step in a bracket that has already stripped away every lower-division hope and left the league’s heavyweights to decide who gets to call itself the sport’s national champion of American men’s club soccer.
