LSU’s three annual opponents have been set when the Southeastern Conference goes to a nine-game conference schedule in 2026.
The Tigers will play Ole Miss, Arkansas and Texas A&M, multiple sources confirmed Monday morning with The Advocate. The news was first reported by On3.
That means LSU will not play Alabama every year. Instead, the Crimson Tide has Mississippi State as one of its annual opponents for the 2026-29 seasons.
Under the new format, the annual opponents will be reevaluated every four years to possibly make adjustments based on competitive balance and other factors, so changes could be made going into the 2030 season.
In the new nine-team league schedule, every school will have three annual opponents and six rotating opponents. Every SEC team will play one another at least once every two years and every opponent home and away in a four-year span.
The SEC will announce the football opponents for every school for the next four years Tuesday at 6 p.m. on the SEC Network and ESPN2. Dates for the games in 2026 will be announced in December.
Two years ago, sources told The Advocate it was expected that one of LSU’s three annual opponents would be Alabama. At the time, former Alabama coach Nick Saban objected to the idea that the Crimson Tide should play Tennessee, Auburn and LSU every season because he believed his team would have a more difficult schedule than the rest of the league.
Alabama’s annual opponents for the next four years are Auburn, Tennessee and Mississippi State, according to multiple reports. Alabama’s two biggest rivals are Auburn and Tennessee. Its campus is 83 miles from Mississippi State.
“I’m fine with the way it’s set up because within four years, you’re going to play them home and away,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said. “You might not get them every year, but you’re going to get them enough where it continues to take the big-game approach to playing Alabama.”
LSU has a long-standing rivalry with Ole Miss. The teams played for the first time in 1894, and they have faced each other every year since 1945. LSU leads the all-time series 64-43-4 with two vacated wins going into their next game at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Oxford, Mississippi.
Geographically, Texas A&M is one of the closest schools to LSU in the conference. They first played in 1899, and two years after Texas A&M joined the SEC, the league put LSU-Texas A&M on the last weekend of the regular season from 2014-23. They are not expected to play on rivalry weekend moving forward because of Texas A&M’s annual game with Texas.
After not playing for decades, LSU and Arkansas have played every year since the Razorbacks joined the SEC in 1992. LSU leads the all-time series 43-23-2 with two vacated wins in the Battle for the Golden Boot trophy.
The SEC announced in August that it would begin playing a nine-game league schedule in 2026 after playing eight conference games every year since 1992.
“The way the schedule is set up,” Kelly said, “I feel really good about what it looks like and all the teams we’re going to get a chance to play in the SEC.”
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