Wesleyan and Trinity (Conn.) meet on the final week of the season, and perhaps the first NESCAC automatic bid in football will be on the line. Wesleyan athletics photo

One of the most common questions we receive is, when are Division III football schedules released?

There's no one uniform answer, and it can even shift from year to year. This season, there will be 245 Division III football programs, if everyone makes it to the start of the season, and it seems we had more schedules out earlier than in past years.

Perhaps that shows schools are excited for the football season! We know we are.

In this case, as of April 19, we have about 70 percent of all games loaded. Here are some of the highlights:

You've no doubt heard about some of these already, such as:

• Wartburg's 2026 non-conference schedule featuring both Stagg Bowl teams, UW-River Falls and North Central.
• The entire CCIW has two non-conference games for this year only. For North Central, those games are Wartburg and Bethel.
• Howard Payne and Simpson are meeting in a non-conference game, and it will be played at The Star in Frisco, the Dallas Cowboys' 12,000-seat practice stadium.
• Keystone and Gallaudet have schedules! Keystone is playing both Mary Hardin-Baylor and UW-Whitewater, yikes, not to mention Washington & Jefferson! Gallaudet has seven D-III opponents, including one at the SCAC championship weekend in Little Rock, Arkansas. 
• We also have the entire schedule for Schreiner, which is starting football this fall, in the American Southwest Conference, and of course has Mary Hardin-Baylor and Hardin-Simmons on the schedule.
• The entire NESCAC schedule is in for the conference's first season competing for an automatic bid to the NCAA playoffs, but of course, the conference isn't playing any non-conference teams, so the schedule is fairly similar to previous.
• Whittier is bringing back football, as is Azusa Pacific, which is bringing it back and also moving to D-III.
• Mary Hardin-Baylor's full schedule wasn't available as of this writing, but in addition to Keystone and Schreiner, the Cru travel to Rowan to open the season. They also play Pacific Lutheran.
• Hampden-Sydney is using its extra non-conference game (since Gallaudet left the ODAC after one year) to try once again to play the University of New England. The teams previously had a game canceled because of a tropical storm. Hampden-Sydney and Wabash are bringing back the Gentlemen's Classic, and H-SC will also face off against Monmouth this season.
• Luther left the American Rivers Conference and really did leave the ARC behind: the Norse play their one non-conference game vs. Millikin and have no opponents from their old conference.
• St. Francis joins Division III and joins the Presidents' Athletic Conference, but has only eight games on its schedule for 2026, all vs. PAC opponents. (The full eight-game schedule has not yet been made available.)

Are we missing a schedule you know about? Does it have game times? (We don't usually post a schedule if all of the games are TBA.) Please email us a link where we can find it!

We'll continue to update as more come in. Here's where you can find all 245 updated Division III football team pages and a weekly Division III football scoreboard for 2026.