Illinois and Notre Dame will meet on the football field again in 2027 and 2028, ending a 59-year gap in the series and putting the matchup back on the schedule in South Bend and Champaign. The first game is set for Sept. 4, 2027, in South Bend, and the return game will follow on Sept. 2, 2028, in Champaign.
The announcement gives Illinois a rare nonconference series that arrives with real weight attached. Josh Whitman said it is a series he wanted on the football schedule since he arrived in 2016, and he called the 2028 game in Champaign one of the program’s most anticipated home dates in decades. Bret Bielema now has a schedule feature that reaches beyond one season, with a game in South Bend one year and a return trip to Illinois the next.
The history behind it is long enough to explain why the dates matter. Illinois and Notre Dame first played in 1898 and have met 12 times, with nine of those games coming in a 10-year stretch from 1937 to 1946. The last time they played on the gridiron was in 1968 at Notre Dame Stadium as part of a two-year home-and-home, which makes this new series the first between the programs in 59 years.
The schedule change does not come without a tradeoff. Illinois said the Notre Dame series replaces Missouri on its 2027 and 2028 schedules, and it will no longer play Eastern Illinois in 2027. The Illini also added FIU on Aug. 28, 2027, so the new slate is already taking shape around the Notre Dame matchup rather than simply being added on top of it.
Whitman thanked Notre Dame, Pete Bevacqua, Ron Powlus, and Coach Freeman for helping make the series happen, while also noting the proximity, common values, and deep roots the schools share in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. Game times and television designations will be announced later, but the bigger move is already clear: Illinois has landed the kind of home-and-home that can define a schedule, and fans who want the safest path to 2028 will have to buy 2027 season tickets, after the school launched its 2027 season ticket waiting list following sellouts in each of the last two seasons.
