At long last, the Buffs’ football schedule is set in stone for next season! On Wednesday morning, the Big 12 finalized its conference slate for football. The conference’s member institutions already have known who they’ll be playing and where in 2025 for nearly two seasons due to the Big 12 scheduling matrix; they just didn’t […]
At long last, the Buffs’ football schedule is set in stone for next season!
On Wednesday morning, the Big 12 finalized its conference slate for football. The conference’s member institutions already have known who they’ll be playing and where in 2025 for nearly two seasons due to the Big 12 scheduling matrix; they just didn’t know when. Now, they do, and fans can plan their travel arrangements for next fall.
The Buffs’ official 2026 schedule goes as such:
- Week 1: at Georgia Tech – Sept. 5
- Week 2: vs. Weber State – Sept. 12
- Week 3: at Northwestern – Sept. 19
- Week 4: at Baylor – Sept. 26
- Week 5: vs. Texas Tech – Oct. 3
- Week 6:BYE
- Week 7: vs. Utah – Oct. 17 (Family Weekend)
- Week 8: at Oklahoma State – Oct. 24
- Week 9: vs. Kansas State – Oct. 31
- Week 10: at Arizona State – Nov. 7
- Week 11: vs. Houston – Nov. 14 (Homecoming)
- Week 12: at Cincinnati – Nov. 21
- Week 13: vs. UCF – Nov. 28
That’s a lot of information to digest at once, so let’s break that slate down for you. Here are the key points that stuck out to us the most:
- All Saturday games: Every single one of Colorado’s games this season falls on a Saturday, so there will be no weird Thursday or Friday evening games for the Buffs this season. If it’s Saturday this fall, the Buffs are playing. (Other than the bye week, of course.)
- Only one bye week: For the last two seasons, since rejoining the Big 12, the Buffs have had two bye weeks in the middle of their season. That usually gives more players time to rest and recover from injuries, but having to take two Saturdays off in the middle of the season can disrupt momentum if you’re on a heater. That won’t be a problem this year, as Colorado only gets one bye week in 2026. Is that a good or bad thing? That’s for you to decide, dear reader.
- No back-to-back away games in conference slate: The Buffs’ conference schedule lines up nicely in terms of travel. They will have no back-to-back away games during Big 12 play, staggering their home and away games perfectly. They will only have to play one instance of back-to-back away games this season, between week three at Northwestern and week four at Baylor. Not too shabby.
- Tough non-conference battles: Outside of Weber State, which will probably be the easiest non-conference game that this program has played in years, the Buffs have a pretty brutal non-con slate. They’ll travel to Atlanta for the second leg of their home-and-home with Georgia Tech, taking on a Yellow Jackets team that’s led by Alberto Mendoza, brother of Fernando. After that, they’ll play the second-ever game at the new Ryan Field in Evanston against a Northwestern team that was bowl eligible in the Big Ten last season.
- Hard home games, easier road matchups: Colorado’s home Big 12 slate is brutal. They have to face Texas Tech and their oil money, a Houston team that finished last season ranked 22nd, a UCF team that looked surprisingly competent in their first year under Scott Frost (lol), and two established programs with first-year head coaches trying to shake things up in Kansas State and Utah. On the road, it’s not so hard. They’ll face a Baylor team that must win if Dave Aranda wants to keep his job, an Oklahoma State squad that is essentially just last year’s North Texas team transplanted into Stillwater, Arizona State minus Sam Leavitt and a Cincinnati team that lost all their best players to the portal or the draft. That amounts to a bunch of toss-ups. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.
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Category: General Sports
