Delivery of the project to redevelop White Stadium in Boston’s historic Franklin Park will be delayed. The $200-million public-private partnership won’t be completed in time for the city’s National Women’s Soccer League expansion team to occupy it for the 2026 season, as originally planned. 

Boston Legacy FC will instead play its inaugural season in Gillette Stadium, the Foxborough, Mass., home to the National Football League’s New England Patriots and Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution. 

The delay, announced May 21, came after a group opposed to the project filed an appeal to a judge’s ruling that the project does not violate state law for parkland protection. 

According to media reports, the earliest White Stadium could be ready would be the middle of summer 2026. Instead of making a mid-season shift from White Stadium to Gillette Stadium, the team decided to wait until the 2027 season to move to the new stadium. Under the team’s agreement with the city, the stadium will also be used for Boston Public School athletics. The all-electric stadium could be ready in time for BPS athletes to play in for the fall 2026 season.

Bond Building Construction Inc., construction manager-at-risk for the city’s half of the project, began site work for the project on Jan. 6 and is nearly finished with demolition work, according to media reports.  

The Boston Planning and Development Authority approved a Stantec renovation design of the 76-year-old stadium in 2024. The renovated facility will include indoor and outdoor facilities with locker rooms, a sports medicine suite, a professional grass field, an eight-lane track and community event spaces, the mayor said. Other benefits include opening more than an acre of green space for public use, fixing some of the drainage issues, new amenities, new pathways and lighting, a new community kitchen, access to public bathrooms and gathering space.

This project also involves planting more than 500 trees, the largest new planting in the city’s history. 

The project’s delay was welcome news for project opponents.

“This news comes as a relief for the communities around Franklin Park who have been alarmed by the profit-driven rush to convert White Stadium into a professional sports complex,” Melissa Hamel of the Franklin Park Defenders community group that’s against the project said in a statement released to the Boston Globe. “We hope that more time will allow for a reevaluation of the flawed plan to build an 11,000-seat sports and entertainment complex in the middle of a park, with no parking and limited transit access.”

The project’s chief supporter, Mayor Michelle Wu, faces a reelection challenge by Josh Kraft, the son of New England Patriots and New England Revolution owner Robert Kraft. The Kraft Group, which is trying to build a soccer-specific stadium for the Revolution on the Boston border in Everett, has gone to mediation with the city after community mitigation negotiations stalled, according to the Boston Herald. 

The younger Kraft, who has criticized the White Stadium project, says he will recuse himself from the community mitigation negotiations if he’s elected mayor.