On Tuesday, ESPN and the College Football Playoff announced the dates and kickoff times for the upcoming season, with several significant changes.
Chief among those changes is a new kickoff time for the Rose Bowl. Traditionally, the Rose Bowl has kicked off at 5 p.m. ET, but will move up one hour earlier to 4 p.m. ET under the new schedule. As such, the two other New Year’s Day tripleheader games will also move up an hour. This season, that means the Orange Bowl will kick off at noon ET and the Sugar Bowl will kick off at 8 p.m. ET.
“This New Year’s Day schedule adjustment is the result of a thoughtful collaboration between the CFP, ESPN, the Capital One Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential, and the Allstate Sugar Bowl,” College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark said in a release. “All three bowls shifting their start times allows us to place each game in an ideal window on New Year’s Day and provide the optimal viewing experience. New Year’s Day and college football are synonymous with each other, and these changes only strengthen that relationship.”
According to Chris Vannini of The Athletic, the new kickoff time will be a permanent fixture moving forward.
As for the other quarterfinal game, the Cotton Bowl will be contested on New Year’s Eve, with a kickoff time of 7:30 p.m. ET.
Both semifinal games, the Fiesta Bowl and the Peach Bowl, will also kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET on January 8 and 9, respectively. The CFP National Championship game will also kickoff at 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday, January 19.
As was the case last year, ESPN will serve as the exclusive home for all CFP games from the quarterfinal round and beyond. The 2025-26 season is the final in which ESPN and the CFP will operate under its current expanded agreement, before moving into a new contract that takes the two entities through 2032.
Television windows for the first round games were not announced. Last season, ESPN sublicensed two first round games to TNT Sports, which it will do again this year. In 2024, the two games ESPN kept for themselves were also simulcast on ABC.