Florida announces home-and-home football series with Cal in 2026, 2027

The Florida Gators will officially meet the Cal Golden Bears in 2026 in Gainesville and 2027 in Berkeley, the schools announced Friday, finishing up an upgrade of Florida’s non-conference football scheduling that turned in large part to the Pac-12 for assistance.

Cal’s visit to Gainesville will come on September 19, 2026, with the Gators’ return trip to the Strawberry Canyon coming on September 4, 2027.

The prospect of a Florida-Cal series was first reported in November by Adam Silverstein of Only Gators, who also broke the news of a Florida-Arizona State series that the Gators announced about a week after the initial report.

This took longer to finalize, for whatever reason, but does solidify Florida’s non-conference schedule through the 2031 season.

Apart from presumably continuing their annual series with Florida State, the Gators will play non-conference games against USF (2021, 2023), Utah (2022-23), Miami (2024-25), Cal (2026-27), Arizona State (2028, 2031), Colorado (2028-29), and Texas (2030-31) over the next 12 seasons of college fooball.

Whether these will be competitive matchups obviously remains to be seen, but the Gator Nationn shold enjoy their tour of some of the country’s best college towns — and, uh, Miami and Salt Lake City — over the next 11 falls.