Kansas football unveils 2025 season schedule

On Tuesday, the Kansas Jayhawks unveiled their list of opponents for the upcoming 2025 college football season.

The Jayhawks will kick off the season Saturday, Aug. 23, at home against the Fresno State Bulldogs. That game will be followed up by a home matchup on Friday, Aug. 29, against Wagner.

The first marquee game of the season comes the following week when KU travels to Columbia, Missouri, to face the Tigers in football for the first “Border Showdown” (formerly known as the “Border War”) since 2011. Missouri won the last meeting between the two teams, defeating KU 24-10 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.

Prior to Missouri leaving for the SEC, the two bitter rivals faced off in football for 93 years in a row, from 1919 to 2011. The Tigers have a slight advantage in the overall series at 56-55-9 and are 30-15-3 against KU in Columbia.

The matchup with Missouri is the first of a four-year series that KU agreed upon under former athletic director Jeff Long. The Tigers will travel to Lawrence next year, and the two teams will play another home-and-home series in 2031-32.

Overall, KU will have seven home games throughout the 2025 season: Fresno State, Wagner, West Virginia, Cincinnati, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, and Utah. The road opponents are Missouri, UCF, Texas Tech, Arizona, and Iowa State.

There is some good fortune for the Jayhawks as they were awarded three bye weeks for the upcoming season which appear to come at opportune times.

The first comes before the Jayhawks kick off Big 12 play, the second comes before hosting in-state rival Kansas State, and the third comes before a road trip to Ames to face Iowa State in what will likely be one of KU’s toughest matchups of the season.

In the last three years, KU is 4-0 coming off a bye week, and three of those wins were against ranked teams. That should be welcome news, especially for the Sunflower Showdown this year, as KU will look to end a 16-year losing streak to the Wildcats.

The Jayhawks also have the good fortune of not having to be on the road for more than two consecutive games at any given time during the season, and they won’t have to face reigning Big 12 champion Arizona State or Baylor (who has owned the Jayhawks for nearly two decades).

FanDuel currently projects KU to have 7.5 wins this upcoming season. Considering they lost 30 seniors from last year’s team, that seems like a fair estimate.

With the excitement of the new football stadium, perhaps they can eclipse that. But after last year’s start, it’d be wise to temper expectations until we see how these players fit together on this rebuilt roster.

The full 2025 schedule can be viewed here. Season tickets are on sale now.