The Concacaf Copa Centroamericana kicks off its fourth edition Tuesday, and although opening night belongs to clubs from Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Guatemala, Costa Rica’s four entrants follow within 48 hours. Alajuelense, Saprissa, Herediano and Cartaginés all open group play midweek in the tournament that has become the country’s most dependable route into continental competition.
Saprissa is first out, away to UMECIT of Panama at 6 p.m. Costa Rica time Wednesday, followed the same evening by Alajuelense at home against Xelajú of Guatemala at 8 p.m. Herediano hosts Marathón of Honduras at 7 p.m. Thursday, and Cartaginés closes matchday one away to Municipal in Guatemala City at 9 p.m. Costa Rica sits at UTC-6 with no daylight saving adjustment, which puts the Wednesday opener at 8 p.m. on the United States East Coast and 7 p.m. in the Central time zone.
Twenty clubs from the seven countries of the isthmus are split into four groups of five. Each team plays four matches, two at home and two away, and the top two in every group advance to the quarterfinals. The group phase runs from July 28 through August 27, knockout rounds begin in September, and the two-legged final is scheduled for December 2 and December 6. Six clubs — the four semifinalists plus the two Play-In winners — earn places in the 2027 Concacaf Champions Cup, and the eventual champion goes straight into the round of 16 of that competition, which is where the real financial upside sits for a Central American club.
Alajuelense arrives as three-time defending champion chasing a fourth consecutive regional title, and the May draw in Miami handed the Manudos the hardest assignment of the four Costa Rican sides. Group A pairs them with Plaza Amador of Panama, Luis Ángel Firpo of El Salvador, Diriangén of Nicaragua and Xelajú, the Guatemalan side they beat on penalties in last year’s final.
Herediano heads Group B alongside Antigua GFC, Marathón, Real Estelí and Alianza FC of El Salvador. Saprissa landed in Group C with Olimpia of Honduras, Deportivo Mixco, Alianza FC of Panama and UMECIT. Cartaginés drew Group D with Municipal, Motagua, FAS of El Salvador and Verdes FC of Belize. No two Costa Rican clubs can meet before the knockout rounds.
The regional schedule lands on top of a domestic season that only just started. Matchday one of the Apertura produced a 5-1 win for Saprissa over Pérez Zeledón, a 3-1 Cartaginés victory over Inter San Carlos in the newcomers’ first top-flight fixture, and a 1-1 draw between Sporting and Alajuelense at Puente Piedra in Grecia. All four Copa entrants now face the familiar Central American squeeze of league and continental fixtures inside the same week, a workload that has historically thinned squads by September.
Costa Rica’s other sporting story of the weekend came from the Dominican Republic, where the XXV Central American and Caribbean Games are underway. Taekwondo athlete Jaycee Bassett, 18, won our first gold medal of the Games on Sunday, taking the women’s -46 kg division (about 101 pounds) with a 2-0 win over Mexico’s Fernanda Hernández.
The first round finished 7-7 and went to Bassett on tiebreak criteria; she then took the second 10-2 to close the final without needing a third. Bassett has had an unusually strong year, winning the G4 Pan American Championship in Rio de Janeiro and the Canada Open before competing at the Rome Grand Prix as the only Central American entrant, and she was a world junior runner-up in 2024. The National Olympic Committee, which reported the result, has begun framing her as a genuine prospect for Los Angeles 2028.
Laura Sancho added a bronze in taekwondo the same day, beating Nicaragua’s Erika Narváez 2-1 in rounds after dropping the second 10-4 and recovering to take the decider 3-0. Both medals followed a strong Saturday for the delegation. Open-water swimmer Jeison Rojas, a 22-year-old from Cartago and one of Costa Rica’s flagbearers at the opening ceremony, took silver in the men’s 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) event in 2:05:03.0, finishing 2 minutes and 29 seconds behind Mexico’s Paulo Strehlke and holding off the bronze medalist by four seconds.
Because only gold and silver carried qualification, the result secured Rojas a place at the Lima 2027 Pan American Games. He returned Sunday in the 3-kilometer knockout and finished seventh in 7:33.4. Víctor Camilo Cantillano also took silver Saturday in men’s individual traditional poomsae.
The Games mark the centenary of the competition, which began in Mexico City in 1926, and this edition is the largest yet with 40 sports on the program — more than are scheduled for the Los Angeles Olympics. Competition in Santo Domingo continues through August 8, overlapping almost entirely with the Copa Centroamericana group phase, which means five straight weeks in which Costa Rican results will be arriving from two directions at once.
