Five of Washington’s first six games on its 2026 football schedule will be at home inside Husky Stadium. That run features games against Minnesota and Iowa on Montlake. Washington’s schedule also features a road trip to Nebraska on Halloween weekend. And it ends the season with Indiana and Oregon back-to-back.
Washington suffered four multi-score losses in Big Ten Conference play in 2024. All four were on the road. In 2026, the Huskies play all four of those teams again, this time with a chance to amend those losses. Three of which are at home. In addition to those four rematches, there are three first-time Big Ten meetings for the Huskies this fall. The nine conference games feature five away and four at home, alternating from the year prior with five home conference games and four away. The season starts with Washington State, Utah State, and Eastern Washington all at home before Big Ten play begins with Minnesota.
Washington’s 2026 B1G Schedule
September 26th – vs. Minnesota
For the first time as Big Ten Conference foes, and for the first time since 1977, Washington and Minnesota will play football. The Golden Gophers head to Seattle on September 26th in what will be the Big Ten opener for both teams. Minnesota currently holds a 10-7 advantage in head-to-head meetings dating back to the teams’ first meeting in 1936. PJ Fleck has been the head coach in Dinkytown since 2017, and he’s won seven consecutive bowl games with Minnesota.
October 3rd – at USC
October 10th – vs. Iowa
The Hawkeyes beat Washington 40-16 in Iowa City during the 2024 season in what was a 9:00 am PT kickoff window in October. It was one of the four multi-score losses for the Huskies that year, and this time Washington will have home-field advantage. Kirk Ferentz is entering his 28th season as the head coach of the Hawkeyes. He’s set a standard of culture and recruiting at Iowa that’s produced eight 10-win seasons and 22 winning seasons. That includes 13-straight winning seasons dating back to 2013.
But when traveling west of Lincoln, Nebraska, the Hawkeyes have struggled under Ferentz. Since the Big Ten expanded, Iowa is 0-2 on the West Coast (at UCLA in 2024, and at USC in 2025). Including bowl games and throughout the entire Ferentz tenure, Iowa is 3-7 in games played west of Lincoln, Nebraska. The three wins were the Holiday Bowl in 2019, the Insight Bowl (Phoenix, AZ) in 2010, and the Alamo Bowl (San Antonio, TX) in 2001. The October 10th matchup will be the first inside Husky Stadium since 1963 between Iowa and Washington.
October 17th – at Purdue
Bye – October 24th
October 31st – at Nebraska
Washington and Nebraska last met during the 2011 season in the second leg of a home-and-home series that actually featured three meetings. That’s because the Huskies and Huskers played in the Holiday Bowl in December of 2010 after meeting in Seattle in September of that same season. The Huskers hold a 5-4-1 advantage in the head-to-head series, and this year’s game will be in Lincoln on Halloween.
Matt Rhule will begin his fourth season as the head coach of Nebraska this fall. He has an even 19-19 record as the team’s head coach. But he hasn’t been able to snap the streak of ranked losses. It’s been since 2016 that the Cornhuskers have defeated a ranked opponent. That team was No. 22 Oregon. Since then, it’s been 30-straight ranked losses. That includes Nebraska’s Las Vegas Bowl defeat against No. 15 Utah.
November 7th – vs. Penn State
Matt Campbell added around three dozen players from the transfer portal to his Penn State roster in early January. Over 20 of those players followed him from Iowa State. Included in that bunch is quarterback Rocco Becht, who was a three-year starter for the Cyclones from 2023 to 2025. He’s thrown 64 career touchdowns with just shy of 10,000 passing yards and enters Happy Valley alongside offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser, who also came from Iowa State. There will be a lot of continuity in that program heading into 2026.
Washington has never defeated the Nittany Lions on the gridiron. With a 0-4 record all-time, the latest defeat was another one of the four multi-score losses of the 2024 season. The teams’ first meeting was back in 1921 in Seattle, and that’s the only meeting in the series that occurred in Seattle. For Campbell, his latest trips to the Western portion of the country were wins at BYU in 2023 and at Utah in 2024. He also defeated UNLV on the road in 2021 and Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl of 2020. But as a head coach at Toledo and Iowa State, Campbell has yet to coach a game on the West Coast. The trip to Seattle will be his first on November 7th.
November 14th – at Michigan State
Washington played Michigan State as part of a home-and-home series in 2022 and 2023. The Huskies came out on top in both matchups. The latter meeting was the commanding 41-7 win that featured Michael Penix Jr.’s 473 passing yard performance on 27 of 35 with four touchdowns. All four of those scores came in the first half.
On November 14th, Washington will step inside Spartan Stadium for the first time since that victory in 2023. Michigan State is now coached by Pat Fitzgerald, the former Northwestern head coach of 17 seasons. There, Fitzgerald took the Wildcats to two Big Ten Championship game appearances and finished inside the AP Top 25 five times.
November 21st – vs. Indiana
For the third time in as many seasons, Washington will host the defending national champions. Indiana visits Husky Stadium on November 21st after becoming the National Champions of the 2025 season. In 2024, Washington hosted No. 10 Michigan the year after its 2023 Championship. Last season, the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes played in Seattle after winning the title in 2024. Washington is 1-1 in those two games, and now it hosts Curt Cignetti’s program.
Since arriving at Indiana, Cignetti has coached the Hoosiers to a 27-2 record in two seasons. The only two losses occurred in 2024 and they were to the two teams that played in the 2024 title game – Notre Dame and Ohio State. The Hoosiers’ 16-0 record in 2025 not only included the team’s first outright Big Ten Conference title since 1945, but it also included three bowl wins in the span of a month (Rose, Peach, and National Title). Entering the 2025 season, Indiana had just three bowl wins in school history. Cignetti has coached the Hoosiers into the greatest program turnaround in, arguably, American sports history. He did so in two seasons. Washington lost its last meeting with Indiana in 2024 against Cignetti’s Hoosiers, 31-17. This was one of the four multi-score losses of Jedd Fisch’s first year in Seattle. This will be the first meeting between these two teams in Seattle since 2003, and the fifth all-time.
November 28th – at Oregon
Thanksgiving weekend will again feature one of the most underrated rivalries in college football as Washington travels south to Eugene for the second time as members of the Big Ten. The Ducks hold the head-to-head record at 2-0 against the Huskies in their conference tenure. The first of those wins was during the 2024 season, Washington’s fourth multi-score loss of that season.
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