Camp Randall Stadium has been shaking under 150,000 stomping feet on alternating autumn Saturdays since 1917, and the fall of 2026 brings six more chances to add to that tradition. Between the schedule, the parking maze, and the scramble for a hotel room that doesn’t require a mortgage, planning a Badger football weekend takes more than showing up in red. Here’s what to know before kickoff.
The 2026 Wisconsin Badgers Home Schedule
Six games are set for Camp Randall this season:
- Saturday, September 12 — Western Illinois, 6:15 p.m. CT, BTN
- Saturday, September 19 — Eastern Michigan, 11:30 a.m. CT, Peacock
- Saturday, October 3 — Michigan State (Homecoming), kickoff by 4 p.m. CT, exact time TBD
- Saturday, October 24 — USC, time TBD
- Saturday, November 7 — Rutgers, time TBD
- Friday, November 27 — Minnesota, 6:30 p.m. CT, NBC — the Border Battle for Paul Bunyan’s Axe, played under the lights the day after Thanksgiving
Kickoff times for October and November Badger games get locked in roughly two weeks out as the Big Ten finalizes TV designations, so it’s worth a check back closer to each date.
Getting Tickets for Badger Games
UWBadgers.com is the official source for single-game and season tickets, and it’s the safest starting point for anyone new to buying Badger football tickets. High-demand matchups — Homecoming, the USC visit, and the Minnesota rivalry game in particular — tend to move fast and command a premium on the resale market, so early planning pays off for those three dates especially. Smaller nonconference games against Western Illinois and Eastern Michigan are typically the most accessible and affordable entry points for a first Camp Randall experience.
Parking on Badger Game Day
Camp Randall doesn’t come with a simple parking lot — it comes with a whole ecosystem. Lots close to the stadium (Lot 76, Lot 34, and others in the lakeshore area) run in the $5–$20 range and open around 7 a.m. on gameday, filling up well before kickoff for marquee matchups. Free lots farther out connect to the stadium via the Bucky Bus shuttle. Tailgating is permitted in most lots, though open-flame grills and oil-frying setups are generally not allowed, and rules vary by lot — a quick check of the Badgers’ official gameday page before arrival saves headaches.
Regent Street, just west of the stadium, is where the real pregame energy lives: bars turn their parking lots into beer gardens, brats sell by the hundreds, and the sidewalks fill red hours before kickoff. State Street, on the other end of campus, offers a calmer pregame with a twenty-minute walk to the gates. Badger Bash, the official pregame party at Union South, runs free and open to the public starting two and a half hours before kickoff, with the marching band and Bucky Badger both making appearances.
Monroe Street near the stadium typically closes to traffic about five hours before kickoff for security reasons, which is one more argument for building extra time into any arrival plan — especially for the Homecoming and rivalry games, when Madison’s gameday traffic reaches its peak.
Where To Stay: Skip the Game-Day Surge Pricing
Madison hotel rates spike hard on football Saturdays, and rooms near the UW campus routinely sell out weeks in advance — a Homecoming or Minnesota-weekend search often turns up nothing but overflow options an hour away.
Stoughton sits about twenty miles southeast of Camp Randall, a drive that typically runs 25 to 30 minutes outside of gameday traffic, and offers a way to turn the distance into a destination: a quietly charming historic town with its own character, where you won’t have to compete for the last available Super 8 bed in Madison proper.
It also makes for a well-rounded weekend beyond the gridiron. Stoughton’s downtown is eminently walkable, with fun shops, lively restaurants, cute cafes, and an arts-and-music scene all worth building a trip around. A Saturday that starts with coffee downtown, includes a drive in for kickoff, and ends back in a quieter town for dinner with fellow Badger fans is a fundamentally different experience than fighting traffic out of a parking ramp after the final whistle.
Need a place to stay in Stoughton?
The Goose Crown Inn sits at the heart of it all in downtown Stoughton, inside an 1878 Victorian home with four individually designed guest rooms — a comfortable, unique base for a Badger football weekend. Check availability for home Badger game dates here>>
