Haiti draws mostly elite opponents in regional Nations League soccer tournament

MIAMI — Haiti’s senior men’s soccer team will face Costa Rica, Curaçao, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Trinidad and Tobago when the 2026-2027 Concacaf Nations League begins in September. Les Grenadiers pulled the familiar, but challenging League A group at the tournament draw held Thursday at Concacaf headquarters in Miami. 

The Nations League also serves as the primary qualification pathway for the 2027 Concacaf Gold Cup — and signals to fans the teams’ potential to return for the 2030 World Cup.

Many fans are optimistic about Haiti’s performance, given Les Grenadiers’ inspiring return to the 2026 FIFA World Cup after 52 years. Supporters hope the experience will pay dividends.

“The World Cup is a school of discipline,” Haitian social entrepreneur Mireille Bertrand Lhérisson commented on social media. “We learn from our mistakes, we measure the technical gap, and we continue to build.”

Group opponents are well known to Les Grenadiers. Costa Rica and Nicaragua were part of Haiti’s successful 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign. Like Trinidad and Tobago, Curaçao has become a frequent opponent and hosted Haiti’s “home” qualifiers because insecurity prevented matches in Port-au-Prince. 

“Interesting group,” one supporter using the name Chouloute Madeleine wrote on Facebook. “We’ve played almost everyone already. Costa Rica is probably the only team with a stronger pedigree than us.”

Being in the group with the Dominican Republic also adds another layer of interest given the neighboring countries’ fierce sporting rivalry and political tensions surrounding the treatment of Haitian migrants. Haitian supporters flooded social media with part humor, but mostly football, as the draw concluded.

“Abinader… this time we’re going to avenge the Haitian people,” a Facebook user, Frantz Casimir, wrote sarcastically, referring to Dominican President Luis Abinader.

Haiti to compete with Concacaf’s elite

League A comprises 16 of Concacaf’s 41-member associations as regional elites — with the remaining 25 nations split between League B (16) and League C (9). Mexico, the United States, Canada and Panama automatically advanced to the quarterfinals as the region’s four highest-ranked teams based on the FIFA post-World Cup rankings, which then triggered updated Concacaf rankings.

The remaining 12 teams were drawn into two groups of six, including Haiti.

Each team will play four matches — two home and two away — during the September and October FIFA international windows. The top two teams from each group will advance to the quarterfinals in November, joining the four automatic qualifiers.

The semifinalists will qualify for the Concacaf Nations League Finals at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California, in March 2027.

Questions remain over home venue and new coach

FIFA still considers Port-au-Prince too unsafe for international competitions and the country’s infrastructure remains inadequate in safer provincial towns, meaning that Les Grenadiers cannot play home matches on Haitian soil. So Haiti has been playing in Curaçao since 2022.

The Haitian Football Federation (FHF) has not announced where the national team will host its Nations League matches.

Concacaf’s Nations League regulations mandate that those who cannot host matches in their own country must play elsewhere in their geographic region. In Haiti’s case, that means only in the Caribbean.

The Nations League also will mark Haiti’s first competition since the departure of Coach Sebastien Migné, who led it to the 2026 World Cup despite extraordinary circumstances. With gang violence preventing international matches in Haiti and the domestic league from functioning, he built a squad drawn largely from the Haitian diaspora and oversaw qualifying camps and home fixtures outside. 

His tenure included a perfect Concacaf Nations League League B campaign and qualifications for both the Concacaf Gold Cup and FIFA World Cup.

Still, Haiti’s winless tournament campaign reignited debate over tactics and leadership, prompting the federation to seek a new direction.

An FHF official told The Haitian Times on July 22 that the federation’s Normalization Committee and technical staff are evaluating candidates and expect to announce a new coach once they identify someone who fits the institution’s long-term project.