2026 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship

The 2026 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship (SFC) will be the 140th edition of the Gaelic Athletic Association's premier inter-county Gaelic football tournament. Thirty-one of the thirty-two Irish counties are anticipated to take part. Kilkenny do not normally compete, while London and New York are expected to complete the lineup by entering the Connacht SFC.

The defending champions are Kerry, having won the 2025 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship by defeating Donegal on 27 July 2025.^[1]

At the GAA's Annual Congress in Donegal in 2025, delegates approved a motion to revise the structure of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship from 2026 onwards.^[2]

Under Motion 19, the championship will feature 16 teams:

• The four provincial champions
• The four beaten provincial finalists
• The 2025 Tailteann Cup winner (Kildare)
• The seven next-ranked teams, based on final position in the 2026 National Football League
  • Position is based on standing after promotion and relegation are applied, and after finals are played; therefore, the top two teams in Division 2 outrank the bottom two teams in Division 1, and if the 2nd placed team in Division 2 wins the final, they were ranked above the 1st-place finisher who lost the final.
  • If Kildare reach the Leinster final, an 8th team is chosen based on league position.

The round-robin stage will be scrapped under the new format.^[3]

The eight winners from Round One will move into Round 2A, while the eight losers will enter Round 2B. The winners of the four Round 2A ties will advance directly to the quarter-finals. The four Round 2A losers will meet the four Round 2B winners in Round 3, serving as preliminary quarter-finals to decide the remaining quarter-finalists.

All Preliminary round, quarter-finals and semi-final in the Provincial & All-Ireland championships will be played at separate weekends not like other recent years.

The draw for the competition took place on 27 November 2025.

Thirty-three counties competed in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship: seven teams in the Connacht Senior Football Championship, eleven teams in the Leinster Senior Football Championship, six teams in the Munster Senior Football Championship and nine teams in the Ulster Senior Football Championship.

Long-awaited: Rotation fixtures not held in 2021 due to COVID-19 they both had last took place in 2016.

Dublin, Meath, Louth and Kildare are byes to quarter-finals and can't be drawn together. The other seven teams go into an open draw.

1st 2 teams out of the draw in the Preliminary round. Teams 3 to 7 will go straight to the Quarter-finals.

• Kildare

There will be no draw, reverting to the rotation between Connacht and Munster champions as Ulster and Leinster champions too.

• Due to COVID-19 in 2021 its has taken an extra 5 years for Mayo vs London and Roscommon vs New York meetings to feature on the Connacht championship draw for the first time since 2016 and also to be held.

• GAA official website