Tennessee football will receive big news this week as they prepare to face Mississippi State in its SEC road opener this week in Starkville. The SEC is releasing its conference schedule not only for the 2026 season but for the 2026-29 seasons on Tuesday night.
Tennessee will learn its schedule and its three permanent opponents during the SEC schedule reveal show, broadcasting at 7 p.m. ET on both ESPN2 and the SEC Network.
The four-year future schedule is a complete rotation in the new SEC scheduling format. In four years, Tennessee will play every opponent in the league both at home and on the road while playing three teams all four seasons with two games at Neyland Stadium and two on the road.
The SEC is making the move to a nine-game conference schedule beginning in the 2026 season. With nine games, almost every team in the league— outside of Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas who play neutral site games— will have an unbalanced home and road SEC slate each season.
According to Tennessee Director of Athletics Danny White on the Vol Network broadcast, Tennessee will have five SEC home games during the 2026 season. That means that the Vols will also have five SEC home games in 2028 and five SEC road games in 2027 and 2029.
That matches up with where Tennessee’s main non conference game is each season. The Vols play at Georgia Tech in 2026 and against West Virginia in Charlotte in 2028. In 2027, Tennessee hosts Georgia Tech at Neyland Stadium. They host Washington in Knoxville in 2029.
If the flip-flop location of current games stays the same, even years present a major opportunity for Tennessee. The Vols will have five home SEC games with one of their four road games at Vanderbilt. Tennessee usually has a crowd advantage in road games at Vanderbilt.
More From RTI: Tennessee Football ‘Emerging’ for Five-Star Wide Receiver Recruit
The big question that the SEC will reveal Tuesday is the three permanent opponents for each team. Tennessee will almost certainly play Alabama and Vanderbilt every season but the third opponent is uncertain.
*On3’s Chris Low has broken the news on permanent opponents since the time of publication. See Tennessee’s draw here
The most favorable draw for Tennessee would be Kentucky. Knoxville and Lexington are just 172 miles apart, making it the closest school in the SEC to Tennessee. The Vols have played the Wildcats 120 total times making it one of their most traditional rivals.
And with Kentucky’s recent and traditional struggles on the gridiron, it would make for an easier schedule for Tennessee. But with Vanderbilt likely on the schedule every season, that could work against the Vols’ chances of getting Kentucky as an annual opponent.
South Carolina has been another popular suggestion. Knoxville and Columbia are close geographically and the two teams played every season from 1992-2023— from when the Gamecocks joined the SEC to when the conference got rid of divisions.
As a later addition and the conference’s eastern most based team, South Carolina does not have many traditional rivals making them a potential yearly opponent.
The last potential annual opponent is Florida. The Gators have become one of Tennessee’s biggest rivals since the formation of divisions in 1992. Tennessee has played Florida every year since with the annual game being the SEC’s biggest in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.
Florida will play Georgia every season and then will likely face either Tennessee or LSU but it is unlikely that they would face both every season.
The SEC stated that it will re-evaluate its permanent opponents every four years so who Tennessee gets for the next four years won’t necessarily be a permanent opponent indefinitely. But it will be for the time being.
