Cal Adds an ACC Game to 2026 Football Schedule, Drops a Nonconference Game

A Cal home game against Pittsburgh has been added to the Golden Bears’ 2026 ACC football schedule to satisfy the new scheduling rule approved by the ACC in September. As a result the Bears' nonconference game at BYU scheduled for September has been eliminated for next season.

ACC teams played eight conference games in 2025, but 12 ACC teams will play nine conference games starting in 2026. That required each those ACC teams that added one conference game to eliminate one nonconference game for its 2026 season.

Five ACC teams will play just eight ACC games next season due to scheduling conflicts that could not be changed. All ACC teams must play a total of 10 games against Power Four conference teams. For Cal, that 10th game will be against UCLA of the Big Ten.

The fact that some ACC teams will be playing more conference games than other ACC teams seems destined for controversy as the 2026 season goes along. Clemson, Boston College, North Carolina, Georgia Tech and Florida State are the five ACC teams that will play only eight conference games in 2026.

The ACC announced the additional ACC opponent for 12 schools on Tuesday, although the dates of those conference games has not been set yet.

Cal’s new 2026 opponent is Pitt, which is 8-4 overall this season heading into its bowl game, including 6-2 in ACC play. The Bears did not face Pitt this season, but lost to the Panthers 17-15 in Pittsburgh in 2024.

Cal now has the benefit of playing five ACC home games in 2026, with those home games being against Pitt, Clemson, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and Stanford. Cal’s four ACC road games will be against North Carolina State, SMU, Syracuse and Virginia.

This means Cal will not play Miami, which is the only ACC team in this year’s College Football Playoff, or Duke, this season’s ACC champion. The other five ACC team missing from Cal’s 2026 conference schedule are Louisville, Georgia Tech, Florida State, Boston College and North Carolina.

This would seem to be a favorable conference schedule for Cal, although things seldom work out as expected once the season gets underway. The Bears’ 2025 ACC schedule appeared to be favorable since it did not face the two teams expected to challenge for the conference title, Clemson and Florida State. But Florida State finished with a 2-6 conference record and Clemson wound up with a 4-4 mark in ACC play, the same as Cal.

Cal’s four originally scheduled nonconference opponents for 2026 were UCLA (September 5 at Cal), BYU (September 12 at BYU), Wagner (September 19 at Cal) and UNLV (October 3 at UNLV).

But because of the added ACC game, Cal has canceled its scheduled game against BYU, a Big 12 team that is 11-2 this season and No. 12 in the final College Football Playoff rankings. So the Bears three nonconference foes will be UCLA of the Big Ten, UNLV of the Mountain West, and Wagner, an FCS program that plays in the Northeast Conference.

Cal will play its final game of the 2025 season on December 24, when the Golden Bears (7-5) face Hawaii (8-4) in the Hawaii Bowl. That game will be played at Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex, which is the home stadium for Hawaii's football games.

The Honolulu stadium is located about 20 minutes from the home of Cal freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele.