Florida Gators football schedule 2025: Night game at LSU among kickoff times set for season

Football

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Image Credit: Trenton Bardi, UAA

Fresh off playing college football’s toughest regular-season schedule of the modern era, the Florida Gators will be right back at it in 2025 playing the exact same SEC teams this season. The conference announced in March that it would not only continue an eight-game league slate but rehash the same opponents from 2024 only flipping the home-and-away alignments. On Wednesday, the first three kickoff times and network assignments of the season were finalized.

Florida will play each of its opening games in the late afternoon or evening, a benefit for the first two weeks when Long Island and South Florida visit Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in the sweltering heat of summer. UF will then visit LSU for a 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff on ABC as the Tigers continue to get every home game they choose played at night, an allowance no other SEC team receives from the league. Though to be fair, when the Gators visit Death Valley, it should always be a primetime showdown.

When the SEC set its 2024 schedule, it did so with the idea that no school would travel to the same location it visited in 2023. The conference also insisted that opponents were determined based on a combination of retaining traditional opponents and finding schedule balance, saying fans should not expect return matchups or a complete flip of opponents in 2025. And then it changed its mind.

The strength of schedule formula used for that 2024 schedule had the SEC calculating conference winning percentage since 2012 and dividing opponents evenly with four (two home, two away) ranking among the top eight winning percentages and four (two home, two away) ranking among the bottom eight.

That formula was flawed from the start, of course, because teams can and do change drastically over a decade-long period. The SEC chose not to revisit this strategy let alone adjust the data to account for another season. Seemingly, the idea of parity did not come into play when building the 2025 schedule.

As such, Florida will play the same slate of opponents as it did last season, except this time, it will host Mississippi State, Tennessee and Texas while visiting Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. The Gators are also continuing home-and-home series with Florida State and Miami.

Unlike 2024, when Florida played Power Four opponents in 11 of its 12 games, it will do so across 10 of 12 games in 2025. Surely, head coach Billy Napier is breathing a sigh of relief. Well, until he looks at the full slate and its intracacies.

Let’s take a look at the schedule updated with kickoff times and network assignments. Keep scrolling for a full breakdown with notes on key games.

Florida Gators football 2025 schedule

Aug. 30 — vs. Long Island — 7 p.m., ESPN+
Sept. 6 — vs. South Florida — 4:15 p.m., SEC Network
Sept. 13 — at LSU — 7:30 p.m., ABC
Sept. 20 — at Miami (FL) — TBA
Sept. 27 — OFF
Oct. 4 — vs. Texas — TBA
Oct. 11 — at Texas A&M — TBA
Oct. 17 — vs. Mississippi State — TBA (Afternoon)
Oct. 25 — OFF
Nov. 1 — vs. Georgia (Jacksonville) — 3:30 p.m., ABC
Nov. 8 — at Kentucky — TBA
Nov. 15 — at Ole Miss — TBA
Nov. 22 — vs. Tennessee — TBA
Nov. 29 — vs. Florida State — TBA

2025 schedule notes

The Good

• Florida gets to close the season with consecutive home games.

The Whatever

• The Gators get off weeks before both Texas and Georgia, expected top-five teams entering the season. Florida will also play within the Sunshine State immediately before both of those rest periods. Originally, only the Bulldogs also received an off week before the matchup. However, the Longhorns moved a game against Sam Houston to give themselves an off week as well.

The Bad

• LSU in Week 3: First time playing in September since 1984, third time in history (1937) for an annual series that continues back to 1971. Lack of care shown for a major game and a tough spot for UF traveling to Louisiana before playing in Miami the following week.
• Florida will play three straight games away from home in November for the first time since 2017.
• Mississippi State is the only team that has the advantage of an OFF week before facing UF. However, three Gators opponents hold scheduling advantages by facing non-Power Four teams the week before their meetings: Miami (vs. South Florida), Ole Miss (vs. The Citadel), Tennessee (vs. New Mexico State). Given how rare in-season games are against such teams, that almost feels purposeful.

The Ugly

• Tennessee in Week 13: First time playing in November since 1955. Latest originally scheduled meeting between the teams since 1932 (games moved to December in 2001 and 2020). UF-UT was traditionally played on the “third Saturday in September” (Week 3). That slot was available this season — for a series dating back to 1976 — but the SEC chose not to honor tradition.
• Though there is an off week in between, the Gators will play at LSU, at Miami, Texas and at Texas A&M all in a five-week span. That will likely be the toughest stretch any team faces in 2025.

Other

• Texas in Week 6: Consecutive meetings after not having played since 1940. First game in Gainesville since that season.
• Texas A&M in Week 7: Fourth meeting since TAMU joined the SEC 2012. (Georgia has never traveled to TAMU.)
• Mississippi State in Week 8: First meeting in Gainesville since 2010.
• Kentucky in Week 11: First time playing in November as originally scheduled since 1991 (game moved in 2020) for a series that continues back to 1967.
• Ole Miss in Week 12: First meeting in Oxford since 2020.
• Florida will not play the following teams in consecutive seasons (last year not played before 2024): Vanderbilt (1988), South Carolina (1992) or Missouri (2012). All three are traditional SEC East opponents previously considered the three “easiest” in the old division.
• With Auburn once again not scheduled, the teams will have only played twice in an 18-year span and counting by the time the 2025 season concludes.
• The Gators are again playing two teams each from Texas and Mississippi.