November 11, 2025
By Evan Lepler
The ultimate offseason can feel somewhat slow for frisbee fans, but you better believe teams are still steadily churning toward what’s next. Tryouts, free agent signings, and preseason practice plans don’t happen without detailed focus, and the seeds for the next UFA Championship chase are getting planted quietly during these cold winter months.
While we wait and wonder to see what will bloom best next season, it’s an ideal time to toss around a little reflection on the current state of the league’s top contenders. There are many meaningful questions we could ask.
Can Boston go back-to-back?
Might Minnesota make a third straight championship game appearance?
Will Oakland harness the booming Bay Area vibes toward new UFA prestige?
Could Carolina—one year after missing the playoffs entirely—rejoin the league’s elite?
And let’s not forget the elephant that is the Empire. After two disappointing first round exits, when exactly will New York recapture its championship mojo?
The common thread between these five aforementioned franchises is they all have triumphantly hoisted the trophy before. And there’s plenty to discuss and dissect about their looming journeys in pursuit of further glory in 2026.
But there is also a cadre of other contenders who are still seeking their first taste of championship salvation. And for these teams, the quest is different, perhaps a bit darker, buoyed by steady belief and unmistakable talent, but haunted by headlines of missed opportunities and undeniable doubt.
Every division, in fact, has a powerhouse program that’s yet to join the hallowed ledger of former champs. And each of these teams—who’ve all appeared in at least one semifinal in recent years—continues to yearn for their greatest season yet.
With Atlanta, Chicago, DC, and Salt Lake, there’s absolutely a world where we could see an unforgettable final four involving this exact quartet of contenders in 2026. Narratively, that would create a ridiculously epic story for whichever team found a way to prevail. But these four franchises also have serious scar tissue and consistent questions that’ll linger until they finally ascend to the mountaintop.
It could happen for any of them in 2026—or it might never happen at all.
The Full Field Layout
The Breeze, Hustle, Shred, and Union have all averaged at least nine wins per season this decade, ranking among the most consistent contenders in the UFA since the 2020 pandemic.
Salt Lake, since joining the UFA in 2022, has compiled the highest winning percentage in UFA history. Only the three-time champion New York Empire have more regular season wins than Atlanta since 2021. Furthermore, Chicago and DC, with 46 regular-season wins apiece, round out the top five winningest franchises over the past five years.
Most Regular Season Wins Since 2021
49 - New York
47 - Atlanta
47 - Minnesota
46 - Chicago
46 - DC
42 - Carolina
42 - Salt Lake *
*Salt Lake joined league in 2022
Of course, consistent contention is something to be saluted, not minimized. The steady postseason participation for these premier programs is certainly a meaningful annual achievement, and the fact that we expect them all to again compete for the playoffs and beyond in 2026 suggests that these franchises are doing many things right.
Yet championships remain the most lasting and meaningful measure of success. They may not be the only metric that matters, but only one team can rise above the rest to finish each season with that exclusive honor. When the final buzzer sounds at Championship Weekend, everyone else has no choice but to watch that one team celebrate and think about when, or if, they might ever get to be in that position.
Chicago's Long Quest For Their First Title
It took the Madison Radicals six trips to the semifinals before they finally won it all in 2018. When the New York Empire seized their first title in 2019, it marked the franchise’s fourth time qualifying for the semifinals. In other words, not every team can be like Boston, who earned the 2025 championship in the franchise’s first-ever appearance in the final four.
Overall, six different franchises have advanced to Championship Weekend at least three times. Five of these teams have won titles.
Chicago is the exception.
Teams With Multiple Championship Weekend Appearances
New York - 7 appearances (3 titles)
Madison - 6 (1)
Toronto - 5 (1)
Carolina - 4 (1)
Dallas - 4 (1)
Chicago - 3 (0)
Minnesota - 3 (1)
Oakland - 2 (2)
Salt Lake - 2 (0)
San Diego - 2 (0)
Seattle - 2 (0)
The Union were semifinalists in 2013 and 2021, losing winnable games both times. They also fell short against the Empire in the 2022 finals. And they were undefeated and poised to rise even higher in 2025, before enduring a painful thud in the Central Division final, when Minnesota closed on a 3-0 run to stun Chicago at home, 19-17, this past August.
“It’s heartbreaking anytime your season is cut short unexpectedly,” said Union co-coach Dave Woods, a couple days after the game. “We suffered through the same feelings after our playoff loss last year. Just like last year, we will get through it together and come back stronger.”
Unfortunately, the Union are all too familiar with this position, having made the playoffs but fallen short of the ultimate goal in six consecutive seasons. While that streak of postseason misery is substantial, there’s another team in this conversation that’s mired in an even longer and arguably more agonizing run of elimination ultimate.
DC’s Defiant Determination
After Carolina missed the playoffs in 2025, the DC Breeze now hold the distinction of having the most consecutive years of playoff participation. The Breeze have been to the dance nine times in the last nine seasons—which is absolutely something to celebrate—but at the same time, they are still seeking their first national title.
When they finally advanced out of the East for the first time in 2024, they were widely considered the favorites heading into Championship Weekend, but DC struggled in the windy conditions and were upended by the upstart Wind Chill, who have astonishingly somehow become a thorn in the side of each of these aspiring champs.
Last year, the Breeze finally escaped from New York’s shadow, only for Boston to almost immediately emerge as another East Division juggernaut. As excruciating as the ’24 semifinal setback was in Salt Lake City, this past summer’s lopsided loss, in which DC only scored nine goals, might have felt even worse.
“It was hard to feel like we didn’t compete at our highest level,” said Breeze Head Coach Lauren Boyle, a day after DC was abruptly eliminated.
Having advanced to the East Division title game in each of the past five seasons—the Breeze are one of two teams, along with Minnesota, who’ve been among the UFA’s elite eight every year since 2021—DC has clearly been a stable, steady, and all-around exemplary franchise. It’s also an organization clearly in the midst of some meaningful transition, particularly amidst the retirement rumors of Rowan McDonnell, the 2018 MVP who resides as the Breeze’s all-time leader in goals, assists, and blocks.
The East Division is a gauntlet, and one might argue that the Breeze are seemingly due for a down year. After all, no team in UFA history has competed in 10 straight postseasons, a feat that DC will look to achieve in 2026. With that said, counting them out feels exceptionally foolish too.
Bottom line: winning regular season games is the baseline expectation in DC, and their well-established postseason presence is laudable. But to reach new and unprecedented heights, the Breeze will need to do something different going forward.
I’m not exactly sure what that is; more importantly, I’m not sure they entirely know either.
But I do know they’ll keep fighting, and their collection of young talent, if cultivated correctly, could ring in a whole new era of Breeze brilliance in DC.
Atlanta's Demon Hunters
If you take a big step back, it’s easy to view the Atlanta Hustle’s first South Division title season as a spectacular success.
After enduring three separate traumatizing heartbreakers in a four-year span that repeatedly kept Atlanta one small step shy of Championship Weekend, the Hustle rose to the challenge in 2025. First, they eliminated their biggest rival with a powerful regular season knockout punch at Carolina. Four weeks later, the Hustle handled their business against surprising San Diego in the South Division final and proudly popped champagne to celebrate the franchise’s first appearance at the UFA’s signature event.
For everyone involved, it was an unforgettable achievement, one that the Hustle organization had been working toward for the better part of a decade.
“I told [my team] that it was never about killing our demons, but simply to bring them with us this game and take them for a ride,” said Hustle Coach Tuba Benson-Jaja, after dispatching the Growlers to clinch the long-coveted spot at Championship Weekend.
Through this particular prism, how could Atlanta’s 2025 journey be seen as anything but a big breakthrough, right?
Of course, the Hustle’s season did not conclude with that San Diego victory. Two weeks later, with a trip to the title game very much within reach, Atlanta let a four-goal lead slip away in the second half of their semifinal against Minnesota. The Wind Chill, who could alternatively be called the Twin Cities Tormenters for all the nightmares they’ve given to these other contenders, used a 6-1 run in the fourth quarter to hand the Hustle their first dose of Champ Weekend heartbreak.
On the one hand, even after the stinging semifinal setback, Atlanta still took a positive step forward just by making it to Madison. But it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that the season ended the way it did, with another winnable game slipping away.
Heading into 2026, the Hustle’s incredible combination of talent and demons makes them, in my opinion, the most fascinating story in the entire league. They absolutely have young talent that’s ready to rise into larger roles, but the foundation of their roster is an older, more experienced core, with many veterans clinging to the dream of taking Atlanta to the UFA title for the first time.
This team has courage, resilience, and breathtaking ability. But do they have what it takes to win the whole thing?
I believe the answer is yes, but I was wrong about it last year, so we’ll see what happens next.
Salt Lake's Conundrum
Last but not least, the Salt Lake Shred have firmly established themselves as the best in the West and stand as the only team across the league that’s registered double-digit regular season victories in each of the past four years. Even though they let the chance to play Championship Weekend on their home field slip away in stunning fashion in 2024, the Shred have shown a steely consistency and ability to develop young talent as well as anyone.
In the 2025 semifinals against Boston, Salt Lake’s youth hung tough, and the Shred gave the Glory a legitimate scare. But just frightening the league’s top teams is not the Shred’s ultimate goal. In order to topple them, something might have to change.
To be completely candid, that’s the present day conundrum for the Shred. They can fully preserve their youth pipeline and build around all the tantalizing teenage talent that’s churning through the booming Utah frisbee community. Or they could become a bit more aggressive on the free agent market, looking to bolster their roster with some bold out-of-town additions.
Obviously, this is not a black and white binary decision, and the middle ground is almost certainly where the Shred are headed, trying to balance development and a future-focused mindset with the reality that they also aren’t that far away from winning it all right now.
But there’s also a case to be made that the Shred exceeded expectations last year. Head Coach Bryce Merrill even wondered in July—with the team in the midst of an 11-game winning streak—if the team’s success was fully sustainable, considering all the impact playmakers who the team had lost after the ’24 campaign. Merrill was super proud that the team had maximized its potential, but he also understood that there was a tenuous nature to the team’s perch at or near the very top of the power rankings. It’s one thing to fight above one’s weight and overachieve. It’s another to try and bulk up so you don’t need to be perfect and can better absorb another heavyweight’s powerful punch.
It’s also worth mentioning that Salt Lake endured several key injuries to some of the team’s top defensive stars, which also hampered the depth department and lowered the Shred’s overall ceiling in 2025. If those playmakers can rediscover their top form, that’s arguably an even bigger boost than importing someone who’s not nearly as familiar with the team’s current culture and systems.
Overall, the Shred are certainly in an enviable position, with coaching stability, strong leadership, and a hungry group of 20-somethings who are eager to prove they can grow into UFA champions. If you were selecting a team to win the most regular season games in the next 10 years, Salt Lake would be a very safe pick. But in terms of reaching the championship peak in the near future, the franchise still has several questions to answer.
So close, yet so far—that’s the common thread between Atlanta, DC, Chicago, and Salt Lake. Clearly, the championship potential is present, but until we actually see it, the skeptics and doubters will continue to chirp.
Fair or unfair, that’s just the way it is.
