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2025-2026 College Football Playoff: Kickoff times, full schedule officially announced

IMG_6598by:Nick Kosko•04/22/25•

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Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The 2025-26 College Football Playoff schedule and times were revealed Tuesday. It’ll be the second iteration of the 12-team bracket in the CFP era.

The national championship next season will take place in Miami at Hard Rock Stadium on Monday, January 19th. No College Football Playoff games will take place on a Saturday this coming season, at least from the quarterfinals through the championship.

The full schedule can be seen below. The College Football Playoff quarterfinal games (four games) begin Wednesday, December 31.

The Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl will be the host sites for the quarterfinals while the semifinals take place at the Fiesta Bowl and Peach Bowl on two separate days. The College Football Playoff first round games will be at the higher seed’s home site just like this year.

College Football Playoff times set for 2026

How teams get to the College Football Playoff could one day change. Count national champion head coach Ryan Day among those who called for automatic qualifiers.

Day, speaking with Colin Cowherd on The Herd, said automatic bids for the Big Ten and SEC would allow for more big brands to go against each other. Strength of schedule was a key discussion point in the first year of the expanded College Football Playoff, and Day argued automatic bids for those conferences could alleviate some concern about missing the field with a loss.

“I think a couple things,” Day said. “I think one, it allows you an opportunity to figure out where you’re at early in the season. But I think it’s important, moving forward with the playoff system, that like in the Big Ten and the SEC, as we start to work through this, that we do get automatic qualifiers and a certain amount of automatic qualifiers. If we don’t, then you’re never going to see these games scheduled. … So I think that’s critical.

“If we want these games – which I think we should have these games – we need to make sure that that happens. Because I think it’s really, really good for college football.”