August 12 – Vancouver Whitecaps Women with a penalty shoot-out win over CS Mont-Royal Outremont retained Canada’s Women’s Inter-Provincial Championship title and for a second time won qualification to the 2025-26 Concacaf W Champions Cup, the first W Champions Cup doesn’t kick off until later this week.
The Whitecaps qualified for 2024-25 Champions Cup with their national championship win last year and kick off their campaign on Thursday with away fixture in the preliminary round play-off to El Salvador’s Alianza FC.
With a new eight-team professional women’s league – the Northern Super League – set to debut in April 2025, the season start is too late to qualify a team for the 2025-26 W Champions Cup.
That opened the door for the winner of the Inter-Provincial Champions but Vancouver were given a close run by CSMRO after two goals by Kaylee Hunter took the match to penalties.
The first leg of the preliminary round in El Salvador will be a big test for the Canadians who are bidding for a group spot to join some of the giant clubs of the women’s game in North America including San Diego Wave, Portland Thorns and Mexico’s Club America.
The inaugural edition of the W Champions Cup will feature 11 teams from seven Concacaf member associations. After the preliminary round play-off, 10 teams will compete two groups of five teams in a single round-robin format with each team playing two matches at home and two matches away in August, September and October 2024.
The top two clubs from each group will advance to the knockout stage, played at a centralised location in May 2025.
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