The Gophers will host Northwestern on November 21, 2026, with kickoff time still to be announced, according to the University of Minnesota Athletics 2026 football schedule.
It's a late-season date on the calendar, the kind of game that tends to carry extra weight once conference standings start to sort themselves out. Minnesota fans making early plans for the fall can pencil this one in as part of a home slate that also includes matchups against Washington and Purdue earlier in the year.
The Northwestern game slots into a broader 2026 schedule that opens September 3 against Eastern Illinois and runs through a gauntlet that includes Mississippi State, Akron, Washington, Michigan, Purdue and Indiana before Minnesota gets to Northwestern in Week 12 territory. No kickoff time has been set yet for the Northwestern game, so fans will have to wait on the Big Ten's TV scheduling process for that detail.
