Inter&Co Stadium is one of the few purpose-built soccer grounds in the country that sits inside a walkable downtown, which makes the search for bars near Inter&Co Stadium a much better question here than it is in most cities. Anthem, 100 N Orange Ave in Downtown Orlando, is under a mile east of the gates, close enough to walk, far enough to skip the post-match crush.
Two clubs, one downtown
Orlando City SC and the Orlando Pride both play at Inter&Co, which means the stadium runs a home calendar across most of the year. The Pride, in particular, have built one of the most visibly queer supporter cultures in American sport. The NWSL crowd in this city skews young, loud and heavily sapphic, and it shows in the stands and in the bars afterward.
For 2026, the NWSL playoff window falls in November: quarterfinals November 6–8, semifinals November 14–15, and the championship on November 21. Whether the Pride are in it or not, those are three weekends when downtown Orlando is going to be full of people watching soccer.
Sapphic Fridays and a soccer crowd
There is a reason this post exists on a gay bar’s website. Women’s soccer and queer nightlife have overlapped in this country for thirty years, and Orlando is one of the places that overlap is most obvious. Sapphic Fridays with DJ Nani Soul is Anthem’s weekly night built for that room: late doors, a floor that fills after midnight, and a crowd that has an opinion about the back four.
If the match is on a different night, the week still works: Harmony Saturdays, Renaissance Sundays with the ABS drag brunch show, Latin Night Vol 2 on Thursdays, and free rooms Monday through Wednesday. The events guide has the full week.
Before and after the match
- Pre-match: happy hour from 3 PM daily, with the kitchen open. Eat before you walk over, not after.
- Walk it: under a mile down Church Street, flat and lit the whole way.
- Park once: downtown garages near Orange Ave beat stadium-adjacent lots on match days.
- After the whistle: Anthem runs late every night, so a 7:30 kickoff still leaves most of an evening.
- Big matches on the screens: we have hosted watch parties for tournaments before; see how our World Cup watch parties ran.
Making a downtown night of it
The best version of a match day here does not involve driving twice. Park near Orange, eat early, walk to the stadium, walk back, and finish somewhere with a dance floor. Downtown Orlando is compact enough that this is a genuinely easy evening. Our guide to things to do at night in downtown Orlando covers what else is in walking range, and the gay Orlando visitor’s guide is the version for people in town for a weekend.
Match-day timing that actually works
MLS and NWSL kickoffs downtown are usually evening slots, occasionally a Sunday afternoon. The pattern that works best: arrive downtown two hours early, eat somewhere with a table, walk to the stadium twenty-five minutes before kickoff, and plan to come back east afterward rather than trying to leave the area by car in the first thirty minutes. Inter&Co empties fast and the streets around it clear slowly. A ten-minute walk beats a thirty-minute crawl every time.
Anthem opens at 3 PM daily with happy hour, so the pre-match window is covered without needing a reservation, and the room is still going long after the final whistle.
Getting to Anthem
Anthem sits at 100 N Orange Ave, right at the Orange and Washington corner in the middle of Downtown Orlando. City garages and surface lots are within a block or two, LYMMO and SunRail put you within walking distance, and rideshare drops right at the door on Orange. Doors, cover and set times vary by night. The events calendar is always the source of truth.
Whoever you were shouting for, the door is open afterward. Anthem, 100 N Orange Ave, Downtown Orlando. See what is on at anthemorlando.com/events.
