Kentucky’s 2026 SEC schedule is now set. Here’s when Mark Pope’s team will play
Kentucky’s conference opponents for the 2025-26 men’s basketball season have been known for a few weeks now.
On Wednesday morning, the Wildcats finally got some dates to go with those names.
The SEC announced its league slate for the upcoming season, the latest confirmation on the road to a complete schedule for Mark Pope’s second year in charge of UK’s program.
It was already known that Kentucky would face Florida, Tennessee and Vanderbilt twice each — and the other 12 teams from the league once apiece — and Wednesday’s reveal assigned specific dates to each of those 18 conference matchups.
The Cats will tip off SEC play on Saturday, Jan. 3 with a road game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. Next up will be the Missouri Tigers on either Jan. 6 or 7 in Lexington, with a matchup against the Mississippi State Bulldogs in Rupp Arena on Jan. 10 finishing off the first full week of league competition.
Other highlights on the conference schedule include:
- Pope will get a rematch with former UK head coach John Calipari and the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday, Jan. 31 in Fayetteville, the only regular-season matchup between the two teams on the schedule. Calipari’s much-anticipated return to Rupp Arena ended with the Hogs upsetting the Cats in February, and this matchup will mark the first time that Calipari has hosted his former program at Bud Walton Arena, which is always a raucous environment when UK comes to town.
- Florida, the defending national champions, will play Kentucky twice this season, with the first matchup coming Feb. 14 in Gainesville and the second set for March 7 in Lexington, the regular-season finale. The Wildcats won their only meeting with the Gators last season, a 106-100 victory in Rupp Arena in each team’s SEC opener. UK transfer Denzel Aberdeen played the past three seasons at Florida, and the Gators are favored to win the league this season.
- Kentucky’s two games with border rival Tennessee are scheduled for Jan. 17 (in Knoxville) and Feb. 7 (in Lexington). The Wildcats swept the Volunteers in the regular-season series in Pope’s first year as head coach, but Rick Barnes and Tennessee got the better of UK in the matchup that mattered most, eliminating the Cats from the NCAA Tournament with a win in the round of 16.
- Pope’s Wildcats will get another shot at Alabama in that league opener Jan. 3, but the game will be played in Tuscaloosa, the only meeting with Nate Oats and the Crimson Tide on the regular-season schedule. Alabama became just the third team in history to beat Kentucky three times in a single season with its 99-70 rout of the Cats in the SEC Tournament in March. This will also be a homecoming game for UK forward Mouhamed Dioubate, who played the past two seasons at Alabama.
- Auburn won the SEC regular-season title and advanced to the Final Four last season, and Kentucky’s only matchup with the Tigers this season will come on the road. That game is set for Feb. 21 in Neville Arena.
All of those teams are listed in ESPN’s latest Top 25 rankings for the 2025-26 season, with Florida topping the SEC at No. 3 nationally. Kentucky is No. 9 on ESPN’s list, followed by No. 11 Arkansas, No. 14 Auburn, No. 17 Alabama and No. 23 Tennessee.
The early ESPN Bracketology projections have 14 SEC programs in the NCAA Tournament field, which will remain at 68 teams this season. Every SEC team except for LSU and South Carolina — the only two teams from the league to miss March Madness last season — is included in the ESPN projections.
Kentucky’s full SEC schedule:
At Alabama (Jan. 3), vs. Missouri (Jan. 6/7), vs. Mississippi State (Jan. 10), at LSU (Jan. 13/14), at Tennessee (Jan. 17), vs. Texas (Jan. 20/21), vs. Ole Miss (Jan. 24), at Vanderbilt (Jan. 27/28), at Arkansas (Jan. 31), vs. Oklahoma (Feb. 3), vs. Tennessee (Feb. 7), at Florida (Feb. 14), vs. Georgia (Feb. 17/18), at Auburn (Feb. 21), at South Carolina (Feb. 24/25), vs. Vanderbilt (Feb. 28), at Texas A&M (March 3/4) and vs. Florida (March 7).
Dates for most of Kentucky’s midweek games have not yet been finalized and will be decided at a later date. Those games will be played on either Tuesday or Wednesday nights. Television times and assignments for UK’s league games will also be announced later.
The SEC Tournament will be played March 11-15 at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
Kentucky’s 2025-26 basketball schedule
According to the KenPom rankings, Kentucky had the nation’s No. 3 most difficult schedule last season, behind only SEC foes Alabama and Auburn, with a total of 13 teams from the league situated inside the top 25 of those ratings.
With the conference projected to be similarly strong in 2025-26, expect the Wildcats to once again have one of the country’s toughest slates, especially with the opponents they have lined up for the nonconference portion of the season.
Now that the SEC calendar is complete, the only holes in UK’s schedule consist of the three teams that the Cats will play in their MTE (multi-team event) in Rupp Arena. The Herald-Leader has been told that those three opponents will all be mid-major programs, and details on those games are expected soon.
Elsewhere in the nonconference schedule, Kentucky will face Louisville in the Yum Center on Nov. 11, Michigan State on Nov. 18 in New York, North Carolina on Dec. 2 in Rupp Arena, Gonzaga on Dec. 5 in Nashville, Indiana on Dec. 13 in Rupp and St. John’s on Dec. 20 in Atlanta.
Louisville and St. John’s are widely viewed as top 10-caliber teams this preseason, with Gonzaga and North Carolina inside ESPN’s early Top 25 and Michigan State ranked just outside of that range.
Kentucky’s final nonconference game is set for Dec. 23 against Bellarmine in Rupp Arena, and that will give the Wildcats a week and a half off before their SEC opener. UK will also get a break during league play, with no game scheduled between Feb. 7 and Feb. 14.
This story was originally published August 6, 2025 at 12:12 PM.
