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 standings 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 are ranked above the 1st-place finisher who lost the final.
  • If Kildare reach the Leinster final, their automatic berth as Tailteann Cup winners will transfer to the 8th-best team in the rankings not yet qualified.

The round-robin stage will be scrapped under the new format, moving to a modified double-elimination tournament.^[3]

Provincial champions and runners-up shall be seeded in the draw for Round One of the knockout stage and given home-field advantage. The sixteen games will be played over two separate weekends; the Munster and Connacht finalists will play in the first weekend, while the Ulster and Leinster finalists' ties will highlight the second weekend.

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 fixtures in Rounds 2 and 3 will be determined via semi-open draw; the team picked first will play at home and a re-draw or fixture swap will occur if a selected tie is a rematch of a provincial final or Round 1 matchup.^[4]

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.

Mayo will travel to London and Roscommon to New York for the first time since 2016. Both sides were due to head abroad in 2021 as part of Connacht's five-year rotation schedule but those games were scratched due to the COVID-19 pandemic. First two teams drawn of the other three counties play a third quarter-final; remaining team receives bye to semi-final stage, which is an open draw.

Dublin, Meath, Louth and Kildare, the previous year's semi-finalists, are seeded and given byes to the quarter-final. The other seven teams go into an open draw; the first six teams drawn play each other in the preliminary round, while the seventh team is given a bye to the quarter-final stage and placed in the same pot as the winners of the three preliminary matches.

Clare and Kerry, the 2025 Munster Senior Football Championship finalists, receive byes to the semi-final stage but are not seeded. All fixtures determined by open draw.

Derry, Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan receive byes to quarter-final stage having played in the preliminary game in either 2024 or 2025. First two teams drawn of the remaining five counties play a preliminary game; remaining ties determined by open draw.

• Armagh
• Donegal
• Galway
• Kerry
• Kildare
• Mayo
• Roscommon

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 it 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