2026 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship

The 2026 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship (SFC) is the 140th edition of the Gaelic Athletic Association's premier inter-county Gaelic football tournament. Thirty-one of the thirty-two Irish counties are taking part. Kilkenny does not normally compete, while London and New York 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. These teams are the two favourites to win the All-Ireland again this year, with Tyrone, Galway, Dublin, and Armagh also considered contenders.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

All throw-in times are UTC+1 (Irish Standard Time or British Summer Time), except where indicated.

Thirty-three counties competed in the All-Ireland Championship: every Irish county except Kilkenny, augmented by London and New York, both of whom compete in the Connacht Championship, bringing the total there to seven teams. Eleven teams compete in the Leinster Championship, six in Munster and nine in Ulster.

• Sixteen teams qualify for the All-Ireland Championship, as follows:
  • .mw-parser-output .legend{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .legend-color{display:inline-block;min-width:1.25em;height:1.25em;line-height:1.25;margin:1px 0;text-align:center;border:1px solid black;background-color:transparent;color:black}.mw-parser-output .legend-text{}   8 provincial finalists; these are the seeded teams in the draw
  • 1 winner of the 2025 Tailteann Cup
  • 7 highest ranking teams (not otherwise qualified) in the 2026 National Football League (NFL). Promoted teams are ranked above teams relegated from the next highest division, with league final champions ranked higher regardless of round-robin table position. If the 2025 Tailteann Cup winner were a provincial finalist or qualified via league position, their automatic berth would transfer to the 8th-highest ranking NFL team.
• The remaining 17 teams play in the 2026 Tailteann Cup

The NFL rankings were as follows:

• The Ulster quarter final between Donegal and Down was the first Ulster SFC game at O'Donnell Park, Letterkenny since 1951.

• Galway reached an eleventh Connacht final in a row, equalling their records of 1933–43 and 1956–66.

• Westmeath reached their first Leinster SFC final since 2016 and won their first Leinster title since 2004.

• It was the first Ulster final between Armagh and Monaghan since 1938.

• Armagh won their first Ulster title since 2008.

• GAA official website