We have our first schedule adjustment for the 2026 college football season.

Colorado’s season opener at Georgia Tech has been moved up two days to Thursday, Sept. 3, and will be broadcast nationally on ESPN with kickoff time to be announced at a later date.

It’s the third consecutuve season and 12th time in the past 14 that the Buffaloes will not begin their season on a Saturday. Last year’s season opener against the Yellowjackets in Boulder took place on a Friday and was also broadcast on ESPN.

Georgia Tech won 27-20 in the first meeting between the two programs that split the 1990 national championship.

It will be CU’s first game in Atlanta and it will be a homecoming for the head coach and the quarterback.

Deion Sanders spent more than half a decade in Atlanta as a member of both the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta Braves, when he became the only player in the history of both leagues to suit up in an MLB and NFL game on the same day. That was on Oct. 11, 1992, when he played for the Atlanta Falcons in their game against the Miami Dolphins in Miami, then caught a flight to Pittsburgh to join the Braves during the National League Championship Series against the Pirates. He did not play in the baseball game.

It will also be a return to the state of Georgia for starting quarterback Julian “JuJu” Lewis, who grew up in Carrollton, located about an hour’s drive west of Atlanta. The redshirt freshman started three of the final four games of the 2025 season as Coach Prime handed the keys of the program over to him. Now, he returns home to make the first start of his second season in college.

The Buffs’ home opener comes in Week 2 against Weber State (Sept. 12) with a kickoff time yet to be announced.