One of college football’s most recognizable rivalry games is headed somewhere different in 2026.
The Florida-Georgia matchup will be staged at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, marking a temporary shift from its usual home in Jacksonville, Fla. The annual SEC showdown between the Gators and Bulldogs will be played for the 104th time, but the setting changes because of renovations at Everbank Stadium, with the work not scheduled to be finished until Aug. 2028.
Atlanta is only the middle stop in the relocation plan. In 2027, the game will move again, this time to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., before returning to Jacksonville in 2028.
The move to Atlanta was announced in 2024. There had been some speculation that the teams might end up playing on their own campuses, but the neutral-site approach won out, in part because of the money involved.
According to The Athletic, Florida and Georgia will each receive $7.5 million from Arthur M. Blank Sports and Entertainment for the Atlanta game.
Arthur Blank owns the Atlanta Falcons, who play at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, along with Atlanta United of Major League Soccer and the future NWSL team, Atlanta City FC.
The schools will also each receive $1.5 million from the city of Jacksonville as part of the broader arrangement to keep the rivalry in that market down the line. The current deal keeps the game at Everbank Field from 2028 through 2031, and a new agreement is expected before 2032 to keep it there beyond that.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium is hardly an unfamiliar stage for major college football. It seats 71,000 and already serves as the home of the SEC Championship Game.
It also hosts the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, which featured the College Football Playoff Semifinal between Oregon and Indiana last season. On top of that, the building will host Super Bowl 62 in Feb.
Jacksonville remains the long-time center of this rivalry. The city has hosted Florida-Georgia 93 times in the game’s 104-year history. The matchup was played at Gator Bowl Stadium, the predecessor to Everbank, from 1933 through 1993, then at Everbank consecutively from 1996 through 2025.
There have only been a few campus-site exceptions, and those came during stadium renovation periods. Georgia’s Sanford Stadium hosted the game in 1932 and 1995, while Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville held it in 1931 and 1944. Before Jacksonville became the regular site, the game also landed in places like Tampa and Savannah, Ga.
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As Georgia looms, there is at least some reason for optimism that the receiving corps could be getting closer to full strength at just the right time. If that trend holds, it could open up more of the game plan Florida has been unable to fully lean on lately, with the real question being how quickly those pieces can be worked back into rhythm before the rivalry game arrives. [Read more 🡒]