The defending National Champion Florida Gators released its 2025-26 nonconference schedule on Tuesday morning.
(home in bold)
Nov. 3 vs Arizona – Las Vegas, Nev. (Hall of Fame Series)
Nov. 6 vs North Florida – Gainesville
Nov. 11 vs Florida State – Gainesville
Nov. 16 vs TBD – Neutral Site
Nov. 21 vs Merrimack – Gainesville
Nov. 27 vs TCU / Providence / Wisconsin – San Diego, Calif. (Rady Children’s Invitational)
Nov. 28 vs TCU/Providence/Wisconsin – San Diego, Calif. (Rady Children’s Invitational)
Dec. 2 at Duke – Durham, N.C. (ACC-SEC Challenge)
Dec. 9 vs UConn – New York (Jimmy V Classic)
Dec. 13 vs TBD – Neutral Site
Dec. 17 vs Saint Francis – Gainesville
Dec. 21 vs Colgate – Gainesville
Dec. 29th vs Dartmouth – Gainesville
Florida’s home and away conference opponents were released on June 18th.
SEC Home Opponents: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee and South Carolina
SEC Away Opponents: Georgia, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt
The Gators will play five straight away from home, including the Thanksgiving tournament in San Diego, the ACC-SEC Challenge and Duke and the Jimmy V Classic vs. UConn in New York City and a game in the state of Florida to be announced.
Florida open’s the 2025-26 campaign on Nov. 3 in Las Vegas vs. Arizona, which is just the start of a difficult non-conference slate.
“A lot of people talked about us not having it strong enough out of conference last year. That won’t be this year,” Golden said on Florida’s schedule. “I think you get these opportunities when somebody calls and wants your team to come play on opening night against Arizona in a showcase game in Vegas, that’s a compliment. You gotta really evaluate that, so we want to do that. Same thing with the opportunity to play UConn. We’re not going to turn down an opportunity to play in Madison Square Garden on ESPN against one of the best programs in America. And we took it as a huge compliment that they put us against Duke in the SEC/ACC challenge. Obviously, Duke is the marquee program in the ACC right now. It’s not close. And for us to be picked to go play there, we take that as another huge compliment. So it’s a challenge, all three of those games are going to be incredibly difficult.”
Florida went undefeated in non conference play a year ago but their strength of schedule during that span ranked just 237th in the country, according to KenPom. That will not be the case in 2025-26.
“There’s different ways to do it. Last year, we went 13-0 in non-conference. I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that this year. But we can still have a really, really successful non-conference because of the level of opponents that we have,” Golden said.
Florida will host six non-conference games after hosting seven in 2024-25.