Inter Miami CF — Miami, Florida

Inter Miami CF is a Major League Soccer club based in Miami, Florida, competing in the Eastern Conference of MLS. The club is co-owned by David Beckham, Jorge Mas, and Jose Mas, and plays in the pink-and-black colors that have become closely identified with the city's Latin heritage and cosmopolitan soccer culture. MLS officially approved the Inter Miami CF expansion franchise on January 29, 2018, as reported by ESPN, and the club debuted in the 2020 MLS season. After six seasons playing at interim facilities in Fort Lauderdale, Inter Miami opened its permanent home — Nu Stadium at Miami Freedom Park — on April 4, 2026, bringing top-flight professional soccer to a purpose-built venue within Miami city limits for the first time. The club arrived at that milestone as the reigning MLS Cup Champions, having defeated the Vancouver Whitecaps 3–1 on December 7, 2025. As of a Sportico valuation reported by ESPN in 2026, Inter Miami had grown to become the most valuable club in MLS, valued at $1.45 billion.

David Beckham announced the Miami franchise in 2014, exercising a discounted expansion option he had negotiated as part of his playing contract with the LA Galaxy, as documented by ESPN. The club's co-ownership structure pairs Beckham with brothers Jorge Mas and Jose Mas, as confirmed by Sports Illustrated. After MLS formally approved the expansion on January 29, 2018, the club spent its first several seasons at a remodeled facility in Fort Lauderdale — originally known as DRV PNK Stadium and later Chase Stadium — described by ESPN as an approximately $100 million interim venue.

The most consequential roster move in club history came in summer 2023, when Lionel Messi arrived in South Florida as a Designated Player, as documented on the Inter Miami CF official site. Messi's arrival, together with fellow Designated Players Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba — both of whom subsequently retired, per Sports Illustrated — transformed the club's competitive profile and its commercial valuation. According to Sportico figures reported by ESPN, Inter Miami reached a $1.45 billion valuation, the highest in MLS, in the period following Messi's signing. The 12-year arc from Beckham's 2014 announcement to the April 2026 stadium opening represents one of the longer stadium development timelines in recent MLS history.

Nu Stadium is a 26,700-seat, soccer-specific facility located adjacent to Miami International Airport in the western portion of Miami, less than five miles from Biscayne Bay, according to engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti. Construction began in 2023, and the stadium opened on April 4, 2026, with Inter Miami hosting Austin FC in the inaugural match, as reported by MLS Soccer. The design was produced by Manica Architecture, with Arquitectonica serving as architect of record, per Thornton Tomasetti. The stadium's most distinctive structural feature is its tensile canopy, documented by Thornton Tomasetti as the largest of its kind in Major League Soccer.

The naming rights agreement was announced on March 3, 2026, when Inter Miami partnered with Nu, described by MLS Soccer as one of the world's largest digital financial services platforms with 131 million customers. The club's official site describes the open-air concourse as offering 360-degree panoramic views of downtown Miami and the broader Miami Freedom Park District, with the venue positioned as 'steps from public transit,' per the Inter Miami CF site. The East Stand was formally designated the Leo Messi Stand by the club ahead of the stadium's opening.

The opening match on April 4, 2026 featured a tifo in the supporter section that read Aquí empieza una nueva era — 'Today starts a new era' — as reported by ESPN. Lionel Messi scored the first goal in the stadium's history, with Luis Suárez also finding the net, per ESPN's match report.

Inter Miami CF won the 2025 MLS Cup on December 7, 2025, defeating the Vancouver Whitecaps 3–1 in the final, as reported by Sports Illustrated. Lionel Messi recorded two assists in the final. The championship was the club's first MLS Cup title since its 2020 debut season. For co-owner David Beckham, the victory carried a specific historical distinction: ESPN documented that Beckham became the first person to win the MLS Cup both as a player — with the LA Galaxy in 2011 and 2012 — and as an owner, a feat he described as one of his greatest moments in the sport. The club entered the April 2026 Nu Stadium opening as the reigning MLS Cup Champions, a status noted prominently on Inter Miami's official communications ahead of the inaugural home match.

Inter Miami CF has cultivated an organized supporter culture that the club's official site identifies as comprising five recognized supporters' groups: The Siege, Vice City 1896, Southern Legion, Nacion Rosa y Negro, and IMS.MMXX. The club's identity, as documented on its official channels, explicitly fuses Miami's Latin heritage with an international soccer culture — a dynamic that the opening tifo at Nu Stadium on April 4, 2026 reflected in its Spanish-language text, Aquí empieza una nueva era, as reported by ESPN.

The design of Nu Stadium incorporates a dedicated Supporter Stand described in detail on the Inter Miami CF official site, which documents the stand's orientation, sightlines, and its adjacency to the Jorge Mas Canosa Park — the named civic plaza space that forms part of the broader Miami Freedom Park District. The club's pink-and-black colors, rare in North American professional soccer, have become a recognizable marker of the franchise's identity within the city and across MLS.

The land now occupied by Nu Stadium was previously the Melreese golf course site, a city-owned parcel in western Miami near Miami International Airport. The Miami City Commission voted 4–1 on April 28, 2022 to grant Inter Miami CF a 99-year lease for the Melreese site, as documented in the civic record and referenced by ESPN. The decision represented a significant land-use determination by Miami's commission-manager government, whose City Manager oversees an operating budget of $1.788 billion and a workforce of 5,031 employees, per the Office of the City Manager at miami.gov.

The broader Miami Freedom Park project, of which Nu Stadium is the centerpiece, is planned to incorporate a hotel, offices, entertainment venues, restaurants, and retail space, along with youth athletic fields and civic plaza areas, according to MLS Soccer and Thornton Tomasetti. The Inter Miami CF site describes the planned development as intended to include the largest park in the city. In August 2024, Governor Ron DeSantis announced an $8 million state grant from the Job Growth Grant Fund to support road infrastructure improvements around the stadium site, as documented in publicly available state records. The stadium's location — adjacent to Miami International Airport and within Miami-Dade County, whose Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has publicly prioritized an affordability initiative in the FY 2025–26 Adopted Budget per miamidade.gov — situates the project at the intersection of sports investment, municipal land policy, and regional infrastructure planning.