The College Football Bowl Schedule for the 2025-26 season has officially been released, which includes a total of 47 postseason games.
With 46 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) games including the College Football Playoff first-round games and the College Football National Championship, 82 teams will play in a postseason game in 2025-26, which is 60% of the FBS.
The ESPN family of networks will televise 42 of the 47 contests this season, including the FCS Celebration Bowl. CBS, FOX, and The CW will televise one contest each, while two first-round playoff games will again be broadcast by TNT.
Bowl game action this season will kickoff on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025 with two games. The Cricket Celebration Bowl is first at 12:00pm ET on ABC, and the day concludes with the LA Bowl Hosted by Gronk at 9:00pm ET on ESPN.
The annual Army-Navy Game, which is slated for the same day on Saturday, Dec. 13, will not be affected by the early beginning of the bowl schedule. The Army-Navy Game will kickoff at 3:00pm ET on CBS.
Five bowl games are slated for Tuesday, Dec. 16 through Friday, Dec. 19 before the College Football Playoff begins. The IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl is set for Tuesday, StaffDNA Cure Bowl and 68 Ventures Bowl are set for Wednesday, and Myrtle Beach Bowl and Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl on Friday.
The second edition of the 12-team College Football Playoff, which has been mostly announced, begins on Friday, Dec. 19 with a First Round game. CFP First Round action continues on Saturday, Dec. 20 with three games. Times and networks for those games will be announced later, but two will air on TNT and the other two on ESPN.
All First Round action will be played at the home stadium of the higher seeded team. Those teams and sites will be announced on Selection Day, which is set for Sunday, Dec. 7 this year.
The Sheraton Bowl will be played Christmas Eve again this season (Wednesday, Dec. 24) and will be televised by ESPN at 8:00pm ET.
The College Football Playoff quarterfinals begin on New Year’s Eve (Wednesday, Dec. 31) with the Goodyear Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas. The game will be televised by ESPN at 8:00 or 9:00pm ET.
Quarterfinal round action continues on New Year’s Day, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026, with games at the Capital One Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Fla. (12:00pm ET, ESPN), Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, Calif. (4:00pm ET, ESPN), and Allstate Sugar Bowl (8:00pm ET, ESPN).
The College Football Playoff Semifinals this season will be played on consecutive weeknights in January. The Vrbo Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., is up first on Thursday, Jan. 8, followed by the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Ga., on Friday, Jan. 9. Both games will kickoff at 7:30pm ET and will be televised by ESPN.
The College Football National Championship concludes the college football season on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. The two playoff semifinal winners will meet at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens and the game will be televised by ESPN at 7:30pm ET.
Check out the complete bowl schedule for the 2025-26 football season at the link below:
It will be interesting to see The Orange Bowl at Noon Eastern Time
bring back the BCS youre ruining the sport Stankey. nobody cares about SMU at Penn St at noon in an amazing playoff showdown #StankeyisnotSouthern
Yes we should really get back that classic Florida St. vs Georgia game or the Uconn vs Wake Forest BCS games
The same BCS model that used human polls as a major input to its rankings? There are much better alternatives that could apply less subjective (and quite frankly, less prone to manipulation) data points.
uconn vs oklahoma learn your fax son
Mizzou/Kansas 1/2 in 07
Cincy made a 4 team
This isnt parity its made for TV garbage. Oregon is real champ of 2025. go away big Stankey
BCS Had a lot of problems too nothing is perfect.
Real champs don’t lose postseason games.
On the schedule, there is a TBA Bowl between the MAC and CUSA, with the location listed as TBA too. Is this a current bowl game that is moving locations, or is it a new bowl game being created?
It is the Bahamas Bowl which for whatever reason will not be played in the Bahamas this year but “league commitments will be fulfilled through other ESPN owned-and-operated games.”
Bahamas Bowl not being played this year, reason unknown. In 2023 when the stadium was undergoing renovations, they created the Famous Toastery Bowl in Charlotte:
https://fbschedules.com/famous-toastery-named-title-sponsor-of-charlotte-bowl-game/
Sad that the Army vs. Navy game does not stand alone this year. The Los Angeles Bowl really needs to be played the same day?
Is this the last year of tie-in games for the faux PAC 12 conference?
I have zero concerns of Navy vs Army having competition with Los Angeles Bowl CFB is changing fast.
1. Yes, it’s the last day of tie-ins for the defunct P12.
2. I’m not all that busted up over Army-Navy not having a whole day to themselves. Historically, they didn’t for many seasons.
Richard I fully support your #2 comment.
Army-Navy was sandwiched in between two bowl games in 2024 as well. But the viewership actually went up over 2023:
2023: 7.2 million
2024: 9.4 million
College Football playoff dates: Dec 6 (conf championships), Dec 20, Dec 31/Jan 1, Jan 19. I wish they’d compress the schedule to end by Jan 1.
Dec 13 (round 1)
Dec 20 (semi-finals)
Jan 1 (finals)
You left out the quarterfinals. There are four rounds. The season will never be over by Jan. 1 and hasn’t been since before the BCS era. Those days are long past.
nothing says college football like a late January monday night game of teams in their fourth bowl game….keep ruining the sport all you’ll be left with is gamblers, teams who play in domes and fantasy nerds like the nfl #WhosIn
I am A Football Fan both NFL & College & I am not a gambler & I really enjoy cheering for My favorite team & encouraging players.
I would like to see a campaign to start help Football Fans that are not interested in gambling that can still have fun watching the game like me.
This is a kind of radical thought I have had for several years now. Let’s do away with conferences all together and have teams play, just for example, 6 games. You can get in all your rivalry games that way, while you are ranked to go into the playoff for the College Football Championship. All teams eligible, if you lose in round one and forward, you enter into regional games to play for the right to go to one of the way too many bowl games. So, the winner of these games involving teams out of the championship game stay eligible to play, for example, in the Citrus bowl say, while the loser is still possibly eligible for the not-so-famous Toledo toilet bowl because so many of these schools want to hang a banner claiming some imaginary championship of nothing. In the end though, you would eliminate most of the FBS/FCS matchups and ultimately a champion would be crowned for their on-field excellence.
This undoubtedly will hurt some ones’ feelings, but it would produce one undefeated champion each year while maintaining the rivalries.
Sorry JM Your post in up for sale by me & I am not doing it to be mean to you My friend.
@Dan, I don’t think it’s up to anyone to buy, sell, trade or give away. Obviously, you are one who’s feelings are hurt by this, maybe because a game with UTEP and Georgia ends in an upset. You missed the point here because there are a lot of kinks that would have to be worked out in it, but someone should be able to come up with a system where we end up with a true champion without any controversy. We ruined the basketball tournament long before we had 14 teams, or whatever it was, from one conference in a field of 16. That invalidates the regular season and the conference tournament so that somebody is just making money off of the games.
What I am saying is that we are heading in that direction in football where the field is going to be made up of only the power conferences. The odds are already stacked in those teams favor to win anything out there, and who know, a proposal such as the one I made, could lead to parity for all these teams. The way it is right now, with too many bowl games, teams getting in at 5-7 because they petition the NCAA for exemption because a replay call overturned a game they lost and would have otherwise won, and those that have to fill in because there aren’t enough bowl eligible teams to fill in all the slots.
If anyone feels like there should not be one true champion, earned on the field, then we need to go back to the days were everything was decided by polls and #1 and #2 didn’t even play in the same game.
It might take someone with too much education that insists on being addressed as Doctor to figure this out, but all I am making is a suggestion that there should be a method to crown that one champion every year where there is all this money in college football.
JM Do not expect me be a Fan of everything actually I do not buy your comments & I never hurt myself over it however I do respect your opinion.
Greatly appreciate you enjoy rest of your day buddy & do not be concern what I post.
Why does the Holiday Bowl always have a TBD date for their game? Happened last year too. The only one!
I am a Fan of TBD.
Dan….
Actually, I am a supporter of To Be Determined I do not care what time they play as long I enjoy the game which is more important.
Does anyone know what time it is Does anyone really care that song was performed by My favorite Rock Group Chicago & I really enjoy how they added jazz-fusion to many of its tunes.