How Georgia football’s 2026 schedule might look under the 9-game model

ATHENS — Georgia football fans figure to have new travels ahead sooner than later with the SEC’s decision to move to a nine-game league schedule.

The new scheduling model, announced by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on Wednesday, involves each team playing three annual rivals while rotating the other six games among the remaining conference schools.

The net effect is SEC teams will face one another at least once every two years, playing every league opponent home and away within a four-year cycle.

The new scheduling model takes effect in 2026, with Georgia likely to maintain Florida, Auburn and Kentucky as annual opponents, based on projected models after the league’s most recent nine-game league scheduling discussions at SEC Spring Meetings two years ago.

The Bulldogs might immediately see a road trip to Texas A&M and a game against Oklahoma — home or away — in 2026.

Georgia has not played the Aggies in College Station, and the teams have met only once since Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012, a 19-13 Bulldogs’ win in Athens in 2019.

Georgia’s only meeting with the Sooners took place in the College Football Playoff semifinal in the Rose Bowl in the 2017 season. The Bulldogs won that game, 54-48 in overtime, propelling UGA into a College Football Playoff championship game with Alabama.

The Bulldogs have nonconference games with Western Kentucky (Sept. 12), at ACC-member Louisville (Sept. 19), against ACC-member Georgia Tech (Nov. 28) and, according to a July 21 report in the Tennessean, Tennessee State (no date).

A nine-game SEC schedule means the Bulldogs would need to postpone or cancel one of those nonconference games to maintain a 12-game regular season schedule.

Sankey noted how the previous permanent scheduling model, where there were 14 teams in divisional play, was interrupted. That led to SEC schools not making all the trips to play one another in what was then a 12-year cycle, hence the absence of a Georgia road trip to College Station.

That’s why it seems likely that the Bulldogs will travel to central Texas in 2026 to play Texas A&M at 102,733-seat Kyle Field — some 90 miles northwest of Houston, 110 miles northeast of Austin and 180 miles south of Dallas.

Georgia previously scheduled a home-and-home series with Oklahoma, with the Bulldogs planning to play in Norman in 2023 and the Sooners slated to return the game to Athens in 2031.

The SEC’s decision to accept the Sooners and Texas into the league, originally scheduled for 2025 before being moved to 2024, led to the Georgia-Oklahoma home-and-home series being canceled.

“I’ll take responsibility for that if people want to tweet at me angrily,” Sankey said on SEC Network in September 2023.

“To the credit of both, there were attempts to see what might fit.”

Georgia’s border-state rivalry with Tennessee, played annually since the league went to divisional play in 1992 seems the most likely to be interrupted by the new scheduling model.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart endorsed a nine-game SEC schedule as far back as 2018 ahead of the Bulldogs’ trip to LSU, which at the time marked the first time in 10 years that Georgia had played in Tiger Stadium.

“I’ve always been in favor of a nine-game schedule, (but) it’s not my decision to make,” Smart said.

“I think it (would be) a good thing, but I think you will have teams with more losses. Does it affect a team getting in the playoff? I don’t know, but I know you have a lot more games to get up for, a lot more good rivalry games.”

At that time in 2018, the SEC schedule rotation was set up in a way that Georgia would not have been traveling to play LSU again until 2030.

“It’s not just about traveling, it’s just as much about the atmosphere of playing an SEC opponent,” Smart said. “I think you are playing more comparable teams to your talent level, I think it’s important for college football.”

Smart also said in that press conference in October 2018 that playing in more SEC venues benefits the fans and the players, stating, “Every environment in the SEC is incredible.”

Here’s a look at the most recent times Georgia has played at opposing SEC venues, with the teams’ all-time series records in italics:

At Alabama

2024: Lost, 41-34

Alabama leads 44-26-4

At Arkansas

2020: Won, 37-10

Georgia leads 12-4

At Auburn

2023: Won, 27-20

Georgia leads 65-56-8

At Florida

1994: Lost, 52-14

Vs. Florida in Jacksonville

2024: Won, 34-20

Georgia leads 57-44-2

At Kentucky

2024: Won, 13-12

Georgia leads 64-12-2

At LSU

2018: Lost, 36-16

LSU leads 18-14-1

At Mississippi State

2022: Won, 45-19

Georgia leads 21-6-0

At Missouri

2022: Won, 26-22

Georgia leads 12-1-0

At Oklahoma

Never

Georgia leads 1-0-0

At Ole Miss

2024: Lost, 28-10

Georgia leads 34-13-1

At South Carolina

2022: Won, 48-7

Georgia leads 55-19-2

At Tennessee

2023: Won, 38-10

Georgia leads 29-23-2