Georgia and UCLA cancel home-and-away football series scheduled for 2025-26

July 11, 2024

Georgia and UCLA cancel a home-and-home series planned for next year, citing changes in the college football landscape.

Georgia was scheduled to open the 2025 season in the Rose Bowl against UCLA, and the Bruins were scheduled to open the 2026 season in Athens. But the series was scheduled in 2015, when the two schools had different football coaches and athletic directors and much else was different.

Still, the news will come as a disappointment to Georgia fans who were looking forward to another trip to Los Angeles, where their team earned two of the most memorable victories of the Kirby Smart era: the 2018 Rose Bowl in overtime against Oklahoma, which sent the Bulldogs to the national championship game, and the 2023 national championship win over TCU at So-Fi Stadium.

Bruins fans will miss the chance to travel to Athens and hope for an upset win against perhaps the best team in the country. And college football won’t be seeing a rare matchup: Georgia and UCLA have only played each other twice, most recently in 1983. But events since the series was scheduled led the two teams to decide to cancel the game.

Marshall will replace UCLA on Georgia’s 2025 schedule. The Bulldogs have not yet found a replacement for their 2026 schedule.

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Why the two schools backed out

Both teams face tougher conference schedules than they long ago anticipated. UCLA joins the Big Ten this year and will have a nine-game conference schedule. For a team that has to play conference games against teams like Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin, facing Georgia may not have been ideal, although the Bruins have added future home and away games against Utah and Cal in light of their impending departure from the Pac-12.

(Although one could argue that the opening game against the Bulldogs and the entire offseason to prepare for it would make the rest of the season go downhill by comparison.)

Former UCLA running back DeShaun Foster was hired as the Bruins’ coach in the offseason. (Jevone Moore / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Georgia, meanwhile, still has only eight conference games, at least during the 2025 season. But thanks to the new SEC format, the schedule is more demanding. Next year’s schedule includes home games against Alabama, Texas, Ole Miss and Kentucky, road games against Tennessee, Mississippi State and Auburn, and the annual Florida game in Jacksonville. There’s also the annual game against Georgia Tech, which will be played in Atlanta next year.

So if the Bulldogs kept the trip to UCLA, they would only have six home games.

From Georgia’s perspective, the schedule fits into the expanded College Football Playoffs: Playing for UCLA, which played solidly under Chip Kelly but hasn’t won ten games since 2014, is high risk and low reward.

It would be a cross-country trip for both teams, and coaches aren’t usually keen on that sort of thing, so to be willing to play the game, it had to be extremely worthwhile.

What the teams still have on the agenda

Georgia’s travel schedule for next year will be significantly less attractive. No more trips to Los Angeles, but still Knoxville, Starkville, Auburn and Atlanta (for Georgia Tech).

The impact on Georgia’s 2026 home schedule is uncertain as it has not yet been announced. The SEC is still debating whether to play nine games, so the only certainty in the conference is the game against Florida. But even the location for that is unclear as Jacksonville looks to renovate its stadium.

Georgia will start another home-and-away in 2026: Louisville will host it that year, while the Cardinals will head to Athens in 2027. There’s no sign yet that this is in jeopardy, but that could depend on whether the SEC expands to nine games.

Georgia also has series scheduled against Florida State (2027-28), Clemson (2029-30, 2032-33), Ohio State (2030-31) and NC State (2033-34).

Smart has been aggressive in scheduling out-of-conference games, scheduling series with Oklahoma and Texas before they joined the SEC, which resulted in both series being canceled. The Texas series is now essentially being played as an SEC series, although Oklahoma is not yet scheduled.

UCLA’s 2025 conference schedule includes home games against Maryland, Nebraska, Penn State and Washington, and road games against Ohio State, USC, Indiana, Michigan State and Northwestern. There is also a game at Utah and a home game against New Mexico.

UCLA’s 2026 conference schedule includes home games against Illinois, Michigan State, Purdue, USC and Wisconsin, and road games at Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota and Oregon. The nonconference schedule includes games at Cal and against San Diego State and Nevada.

(Photo: Brett Carlsen / Getty Images)