Coastal Carolina will face a Big 12 opponent to open the 2026 season.
The Chanticleers will face West Virginia University at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, West Virginia, on Sept. 5, 2026, the school announced on Tuesday, Aug. 26.
Coastal was scheduled to face Delaware on the road in the 2026 season opener on Sept. 3. That game has been moved to Week 3, when the Chants were scheduled to host Temple on Sept. 19. The Temple game has been canceled.
The Chants have two non-conference home games scheduled next year against FCS opponent Fordham in Week 2 and Liberty in Week 4 in addition to eight Sun Belt Conference games to be announced.
The Mountaineers will give CCU another revenue-producing opponent, as Power Four Conference schools pay Group of Five programs like the Chants a fee for playing at their home stadiums.
CCU has two such games this year. They begin the season at Virginia of the ACC at 6 p.m. Saturday, which will be aired on the ACC Network and the Chanticleer Sports Network, and travel to South Carolina of the SEC on Nov. 22.
Coastal and WVU have met once before, a 31-0 win by then No. 25听WVU听in the 2010 season opener in Morgantown, when CCU was still an FCS program.
CCU has faced West Virginia's head coach in recent years, however. Rich Rodriguez is in his first season in his second stint at West Virginia, and faced CCU in each of the past two years as the head coach at Jacksonville State.
CCU won those games 30-16 at Brooks Stadium in 2023 and 55-27 in Jacksonville, Alabama last year.
Rodriguez coached West Virginia from 2001-07 before moving to Michigan (2008-10), Arizona (2012-17) and later Jacksonville State (2023-24).
The opportunity to play West Virginia arose with the announced cancellation of the Mountaineers' scheduled home-and-home series with Alabama in 2026 and 2027. The 2026 game was set to be played in Morgantown.
In 2026, West Virginia's non-conference slate will also consist of Virginia in Charlotte and UT Martin at home. The Mountaineers have replaced Alabama in 2027 with another Sun Belt program in Southern Miss.
Michael T. Benson, who was Coastal Carolina's president for 4 1/2 years through this past June, is the new president of WVU.
The SEC announced last week that it is moving from an eight-game conference schedule to nine games in 2026, and conference member Alabama replaced WVU with a home game against ECU to go along with a scheduled non-conference home game against Florida State.
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