The Southeastern Conference just announced the new schedule of three SEC teams that Mississippi State football will face starting in 2026, as well as the nine annual conference games for the next four seasons for all conference teams.
The Bulldogs will compete against Alabama, Vanderbilt and Ole Miss every season from 2026 to 2029.
Alongside the three annual games, the SEC also announced a new rule beginning in 2026, where each SEC team will play nine conference games. This is in addition to one matchup from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 or Notre Dame, annually.
Mississippi State will play every other SEC team biannually and will alternate home and away matches with the respective team.
Competing against Ole Miss will be nothing new for the Bulldogs since they have competed in the Egg Bowl every year. In total, MSU has had a win-loss-tie record with the Rebels of 47-68-6. The rivalry is set to take place at Davis Wade Stadium in 2027 and 2029 and at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in 2026 and 2028.
MSU football will also see the Crimson Tide each year until 2029. The MSU Bulldogs have a long history with Alabama, having played each other a total of 108 times. However, those 108 times rarely favored MSU winning. Their WLT record with Bama is 18-87-3.
The last time the Dawgs faced the Tide was in 2023 when MSU lost 40-17.
MSU will host Alabama for their first of four matchups as well as their game in 2028, and the Bulldogs will travel to Tuscaloosa in 2027 and 2029.
The final annual conference game for State will be against Vanderbilt, an unfamiliar team to the Dawgs. MSU has only faced the Commodores 24 times, with their last meeting being in 2021, when the Bulldogs forced a blowout on Vandy 45-6.
Vanderbilt will also be one of the teams to travel to Starkville for the 2026 and 2028 seasons.
Aside from the three annual opponents, MSU will also play every conference team twice in the span of four years. There are 16 SEC teams, so each team will play six of them bi-yearly to ensure the frequency of matchups.
For the 2026 season, State will play teams such as: Auburn, LSU, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
MSU and Oklahoma have never played each other in football before, making the matchup in 2026 the first time, which will take place in Starkville. LSU, Auburn and South Carolina all faced the Dawgs in 2023.
The main goal of the SEC in creating the nine-game conference schedule was to maintain and renew traditional rivalries and increase the frequency of matchups against unfamiliar opponents.
The conference also wanted to ensure a similar strength of schedule across the conference and create as many opportunities as possible for an SEC team to make its way to the College Football Playoffs.
Simply, the SEC will soon look more like the competitive and rigorous conference that it started out as. Nine out of 12 season games will be against teams in the SEC. There will be no more situations where a team in the conference has not played another conference team in the last two years.
State fans need to be ready for the matchups to come, holding onto their cowbells tight and ringing like never before.
