DC United made a lot of player moves in the offseason to prepare for the 2026 season. Now, it’s official the club roster profile that they will operate under for the first half of the season. Yesterday, Major League Soccer released the club roster profiles for all 30 teams, and the Black-and-Red will operate under the U22 Initiative Player Model.

Teams have to choose between two models of how they structure their roster: the Designated Player Model or the U22 Initiative Player Model. Under the Designated Player model, clubs can have up to three Designated Players on their roster and up to three U22 Initiative players. If they select the U22 Initiative Player model, they can have up to two Designated Players and up to four U22 Initiative players. They would also be able to utilize up to an additional $2 million in General Allocation Money to “buy down” a player’s Salary Budget Charge, sign players new to the league, re-sign an existing MLS player, or offset acquisition costs.

After operating under the Designated Player model last season, where they only had Christian Benteke as a DP on the active roster, the team has switched to the U22 Initiative model. They maxed out their DP slots under that model by signing Tai Baribo and Louis Munteanu during the offseason. They currently have three U22 Initiative players on the roster in Caden Clark, Gabriel Pirani, and Kim Joon-hong. Kim was sent out on loan during the offseason, but because DC United is paying some of his salary, he takes up both a U22 Initiative spot and an international slot.

DC United’s majority owners, Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan, indicated many times towards the end of last season their intention to max out the DP slots with their personnel moves, but the team still has one open U22 Initiative slot and are using a second on a player who will be out on loan for the season.

The roster designations for DC United:

Designated Players (2): Tai Baribo, Louis Munteanu (INTL)
U22 Initiative (3): Caden Clark, Kim Joon-Hong (INTL), Gabriel Pirani
TAM Players (6): Aaron Herrera, Sean Johnson, Keisuke Kurokawa (INTL), João Peglow (INTL), Matti Peltola (INTL), Kye Rowles (INTL)
Homegrown Players (4): Oscar Avilez, Garrison Tubbs, Gavin Turner, Grant Leveille
Generation Adidas (2): Nikola Markovic (INTL), Richie Aman
Senior Roster (8): Conner Antley, Lucas Bartlett, Alex Bono, Silvan Hefti (INTL), Jackson Hopkins, Sean Nealis, Brandon Servania, Jared Stroud
Supplemental Roster (5): Jordan Farr, Hakim Karamoko, Hosei Kijima, Jacob Murrell, Gabe Segal
INTL – International Slot

The club has eight international slots, and they are all being used. That includes the one held for Kim Joon-hong. Jackson Hopkins has graduated from his Homegrown Player contract and now takes up a senior roster spot. However, the club still has 4 Homegrown Players after the recent signing of Grant Leveille, and MLS Superdraft signees Nikola Markovic and Richie Aman are listed as Generation Adidas players. In total, DC United has 30 players listed on the roster, with 29 of them available for selection on matchdays.

DC United hits the road this weekend to take on Austin FC on Sunday in their second match of the season.