Florida announces homecoming game in 2026 will be against South Carolina

Florida has announced its opponent for its annual homecoming game in 2026. The university will have its homecoming festivities when it hosts South Carolina on Oct. 10, the school announced on Thursday.

The two schools have shared a friendly rivalry of sorts over the last two decades, in part thanks to some common ground between the two. Former Florida coach Steve Spurrier ended up coaching at South Carolina following a brief stint in the NFL. Then, former Florida coach Will Muschamp also ended up there.

The last meeting between the two programs came in 2023, when Florida won a thrilling 41-39 contest. Florida has won the last two in the series and five of the last six.

As far as homecoming goes, Florida is 74-26-2 in homecoming games all-time. That includes a 32-5 mark since 1989.

Last season, Florida defeated Mississippi State 23-21 in a down-to-the-wire affair that ended when defensive lineman Michai Boireau picked off a pass in the waning moments. The Gators lost their homecoming matchup against No. 5 Texas A&M in 2024.

Florida’s Jon Sumrall rails on current calendar

Unrelated to where homecoming falls on the calendar, new Florida coach Jon Sumrall had some pointed comments about the college football calendar recently. Suffice it to say he’s not a fan.

“I would love for us to move the season up a week or two,” Sumrall said. “I think it’s asinine. I get it that it’s for TV and money, but the college football championship game next year is on [Jan. 25]. That’s absurd to me. That means the mid-point of the football season is like mid-late November. We could take for an hour on this, but there’s some other parts to this too.

“We moved up the high school signing date to early Dec., and we did that to protect the high school kids from losing their spots to transfers. But then, right after we did that, we moved the transfer portal window back. So it’s like ‘why did we move high school signing day from the middle of Dec. to the beginning?’ So we fix a problem, but then we change the other part of it. It just seems a bit scattered. There’s still this thing called school. These guys still have to go to school… allegedly.

“The academic calendar and the football season really doesn’t match like it used to, which I think for us archaic football coaches and how we think is a bit messy. It’s a little unclean. But, move the season up. Start the playoffs earlier and end the playoffs earlier. Make it match a little bit more to the old Jan. 1 national championship game. Maybe not the first and maybe it’s the fourth, but that would be awesome.”