The Canadian Premier League (CPL) announced on OneSoccer on Saturday night that the leagues third season is set to begin on June 26, 2021.

After a successful inaugural season in 2019, the league played a summer tournament in 2020 on Prince Edward Island where all the teams were in a Charlottetown bubble.

This season is set to be a mix of both. The CPL season will begin in a bubble at IG Field in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The bubble will last nearly one month from June 26 – July 24, 2021. All eight clubs will play eight games in total, once each against six clubs and twice against a seventh. This will allow all clubs to, on paper, have an even number of home and away games played.

After July 24, the clubs will look to head to their respective homes where they will carry out the remainder of the season in usual fashion. This gives the league an opportunity to start early in the summer and get a near full season in, without having to wait for Canada to boost vaccination numbers and decrease new case counts before starting play.

While the season will begin without fans, the plan is to open up at least some level of capacity after the bubble is complete. Completely depending on how Canada continues to trend regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The league says they are committed to delivering 20 further games post-bubble for each team as they monitor the pandemic situation in each city.

With eight clubs making up the CPL, the Atlantic Canadian region is represented by one club – HFX Wanderers FC in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The seasons opening day will feature Atlético Ottawa facing FC Edmonton at 3:00 PM Atlantic, as well as a battle between the coastal clubs as HFX Wanderers FC take on Pacific FC at 6:00 PM Atlantic. The remainder of the bubble schedule will be released on June 9, while the full season schedule is set to come at a later date. There will also be new kits for each team to be released on June 7.

The Wanderers are a founding member, having played in the league since its inaugural season. The club plays at Wanderers Grounds in the downtown, next door to the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site. The stadium holds 6,500 supporters and is regularly regarded as the greatest atmosphere in the league.

In 2019, the Wanderers finished with a 6-10-12 record through 28 games, finishing seventh in the league overall between the spring and fall seasons and made the third qualifying round of the 2019 Canadian Championship.

As previously mentioned, the 2020 season, otherwise known as the “Island Games” was a bubble season at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) campus. In the first stage, the Wanderers finished second place and advanced to the group stage with three other teams making up the top four. Halifax split the group stage with a win, a draw and a loss, but finishing second of four sent them to their first ever CPL Final. The Wanderers would fall 2-0 to the defending champion Forge FC, but that atmosphere was still existent at Wanderers Grounds where there was a socially distanced watch party.

HFX have prided themselves in developing local talent, with Scott Firth (Halifax, NS) and Christian Oxner (Clayton Park, NS) having been in the squad. Germany’s Peter Schaale and England’s Cory Bent have both made the journey from Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia to the Wanderers.

For more information on the Canadian Premier League, click here.

To watch all games, including the Canadian men’s and women’s national teams and more, check out OneSoccer here.