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David Hale
For the first time since 2008, the Atlantic Coast Conference will play its championship football game in the Saturday afternoon window on championship weekend – a move that will put the conference front and center in its TV window after years of competing with the Big Ten for evening viewers.
The announcement of moving the title game from its usual 8 p.m. ET time slot was part of the ACC’s 2026 schedule release on Monday, which also included details of a busy opening weekend that will include games spanning at least four days as well as some international contests scheduled for Week 0.
The ACC’s change to the championship game schedule comes as part of a campaign to add more spectators to the games and attract more fans to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. In the afternoon window, the ACC will be the only Power 4 conference playing at that time, kicking off a Saturday slate of title games.
The earlier kick time is also meant to make attendance more enjoyable, given that the ACC is the only power conference to play its championship game in an outdoor stadium. The temperature at kickoff at last season’s championship game between Duke and Virginia was 31 degrees.
The conference also announced full schedules for all 17 teams on Monday, ending a year in which the ACC is planning a change to a nine-game conference slate. Five teams – Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, North Carolina and Boston College – will play only eight conference games, while the remaining 12 will play nine league games in 2026. Starting in 2027, all but one school will play nine league games each season.
The ACC is also strengthening its commitment to maximizing Friday night windows, with at least 19 games to be played on Fridays in 2026.
The 2026 season will begin with five ACC teams playing games in Week 0, including North Carolina, who will face TCU in Dublin, and NC State and Virginia, who will play each other in Rio de Janeiro. That game was initially scheduled as a non-conference matchup, but it was changed to an ACC game after the league expanded conference play.
The ACC will again extend Week 1 as well. Wake Forest will host Akron on Thursday, September 3 and Miami will travel to Stanford on Friday, September 4, followed by a series of games on Saturday and a Labor Day game between SMU and Florida State.
The dates of the Week 1 non-conference showdowns between Georgia Tech and Colorado (either Thursday or Friday) and Louisville and Ole Miss (Saturday or Sunday) are still to be determined.
Following its visit to Stanford, Miami – fresh off a trip to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game – will host Florida A&M, travel to Wake Forest, host Central Michigan and travel to Clemson before an open date and a rivalry game against Florida State. Miami will not face a team that has retired from the 2025 season until Nov. 7 when the Hurricanes travel to Notre Dame. The Wake Forest game is the only other matchup on Miami’s slate against a team that lost fewer than five games last season.
A year ago, it was Bill Belichick’s North Carolina that appeared to have one of the easiest slates in ACC play. In 2026, life gets a little more difficult for the second-year Heels coach. After the Week 0 game against TCU, UNC travels to Clemson (Sept. 19); host Notre Dame (Oct. 3); The first half of the season travels to both Pitt (Oct. 10) and ACC champion Duke (Oct. 17).
Florida State’s start to the season is even more difficult. The Seminoles’ first eight games include New Mexico State in Week 0, then six of seven against teams that won at least nine games last season – at SMU, at Alabama, vs. Central Arkansas, vs. Virginia, at Louisville, at Miami – before hosting Clemson on Oct. 31.
Another oddity of the new nine-game slate: Louisville, which opens with Ole Miss and plays a rivalry game against Kentucky to end the season, will play a total of 11 games against Power 4 competition, including 10 straight after the Week 2 game against FCS Villanova.
