AFC Toronto meets the Montreal Roses in the NSL Final 2026 on Saturday, November 14 at TD Place in Ottawa, a 2 p.m. ET kickoff for the Diana B. Matheson Cup. The AFC Toronto Montreal Roses final pairs the regular season champions against the team that lost last year’s final, with the league’s two leading scorers on opposite sides.
Montreal finished first in the six-team league with 45 points from 25 games. Toronto finished third with 39, then produced the playoffs’ loudest result, an 8-2 aggregate semifinal win over Ottawa. The final is a neutral-site game at the home of the Ottawa Rapid, the team Toronto eliminated to get there. iimiTV set the matchup in Roses Meet Toronto In NSL Final when the finalists were confirmed; this is the full preview.
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NSL Final 2026: how Toronto and Montreal got here
Toronto’s semifinal was settled early and finished emphatically. AFC Toronto won the first leg 4-2 at York Lions Stadium, then went to TD Place on November 7 and won the second leg 4-0, Kaylee Hunter scoring her second straight brace, for an 8-2 aggregate victory reported by AFC Toronto’s official match report. Montreal’s route was tighter: a 3-0 first-leg win away to the Vancouver Rise in Burnaby, then a 2-2 draw in the second leg to complete a 5-2 aggregate win and end the reign of the defending champions.
NSL president Christina Litz marked the final being set with a message carried in Northern Tribune’s final preview:
Congratulations to AFC and Montreal Roses for advancing to the 2026 NSL Final.
Hunter against Bennett, the scoring race
The individual duel is the final’s sharpest edge. Toronto’s Kaylee Hunter scored 11 goals in the regular season and added four more across the playoff run, including back-to-back braces in the semifinal. Montreal’s Elyse Bennett scored 12 this season, the mark Hunter is chasing from one goal back with one game to play. Both forwards arrive in form, both are their team’s first route to goal, and the final puts them on the same pitch with the trophy decided by which line takes its chances.
Behind Hunter, Toronto are coached by Marko Milanovic, named the league’s coach of the year for a second consecutive season. Behind Bennett, Montreal carry the league’s best regular season record and its best goal difference, 43 scored and 27 conceded for a plus-16 mark.
Five meetings this season point one way, narrowly
The head-to-head record, set out in the 2026 Northern Super League final record, favours Montreal without settling anything. The Roses beat Toronto twice, 1-0 on May 10 and 2-0 on August 16. Toronto’s one win was emphatic, 2-0 on July 23. The other two meetings were drawn, 1-1 on June 13 and 2-2 on September 10. Five games, three of them decided by a goal or fewer, and a sixth meeting now decides the championship.
The stakes differ by bench. Montreal, in its first NSL Final, can complete a double no team has managed in the league’s short history: the Supporters’ Shield and the championship in the same season, after Vancouver split the honours last year. Toronto are in a second straight final after losing the 2025 championship game 2-1 to Vancouver on home turf, and this one offers the club’s first league title on a neutral ground instead.
How to watch the NSL Final
Kickoff is 2 p.m. ET on Saturday, November 14 at TD Place Stadium, 1015 Bank Street in Ottawa, with tickets listed from $26. In Canada the match is televised on CBC and TSN in English and on RDS in French, with pre-game and post-game coverage. In the United States it streams on ESPN+, and the NSL’s YouTube channel streams the match worldwide. A full recap follows the final whistle on iimiTV.
