No general admission tickets will be sold for one of the biggest regular-season high school football games of the 2026 season.
No. 1 Detroit Cass Tech and No. 5 Detroit King will play on Friday, Sept. 25, at 5 p.m. at Cass Tech High School in Detroit in Week 5. Students, alumni and parents of players, cheerleaders and band members will be the only ones in the crowd. The change stems from a new Detroit Public School Community District policy for all athletic events in the 2026-27 school year.
"Due to the high demand for tickets at the game, attendance will be restricted to the schools’ current students; participating student-athlete families; including bands and cheer teams; the schools’ families, and alumni," the Detroit Public School District
told the Free Press in a written statement Tuesday, Sept. 22. "No tickets will be sold publicly, and no tickets will be sold at the gate. Essentially, the game is sold out and will only be attended by those directly associated with both schools."
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According to a Sept. 10 announcement from superintendent Nikolai Vitti, the new Detroit schools ticketing policy states: "For high-profile events and games involving two District schools, 60% of stadium capacity at each game will be reserved for students from the participating schools with the majority going to the home team. Student ticket allocation will be determined using school enrollment and facility capacity."
Since it will be a highly attended game with a limited number of tickets, seating for students will be open to a quarter of Cass Tech's enrollment and a quarter of King's, with a majority reserved for Cass as the home team.
Student families can utilize their season passes to attend, which will comprise most of the remaining 40%. The remaining tickets after students and parents receive theirs will go to Cass Tech and King alumni associations to distribute to former students.
For the high-profile games, administrators determine how their school's student tickets are distributed, using a lottery or another "fair" method. They will distribute wristbands to identify participating students. DPSCD employees will only admit students who received a wristband from their administrators and are wearing it at the gate.
"It is based on ticket sales and ticket numbers are based on the capacity of the stadium," Detroit Public Schools athletics executive director Jay Alexander told the Free Press this week. "And then 25% of their enrollment because it is a highly attended game. ... Then you have the families who will have the opportunity to get their pass to purchase tickets and go to the game. That would be families of the band, families of the cheerleaders, families of the players."
The PreP Network will livestream the game on YouTube.
Alexander said the "high-profile" matchups are often between Detroit's high-enrollment schools – Cass Tech, King and Renaissance.
"It would be King vs. Renaissance, Cass vs. Renaissance, Cass vs. King," Alexander said. "Those are typically our high-attendance games."
Two-thousand tickets will be utilized for the 2026 Cass-King game, according to Alexander. All Detroit Public Schools students can attend their respective school's athletic events for free during the 2026-27 season by showing a valid school ID. The only caveat comes during the high-profile games, such as Cass-King, which are open to 25% of a school's student population determined by that school's administration. DPS central office will refund schools for all lost student ticket sales.
"We are kind of making it easier for the kids to have some school pride and some school commitment to be able to attend the games," Alexander said.
It will be a more intimate atmosphere than the last regular-season meeting between Cass and King. The two top Detroit high school football programs played last year at Wayne State's Tom Adams Field, which holds nearly 6,500 people.
Last year's game was suspended because of safety concerns. People hopped fences around Tom Adams Field, overcrowding the stadium. The game was paused and finished the next day in front of just families at King High School, with Cass winning 27-22.
According to Alexander, the return to Cass, where they last played in 2024 in an 18-12 King win, was unrelated to last year's stoppage. Cass will have multiple entry points, along with security provided by DPS and Detroit Police officers.
One change stemming from the 2025 Cass-King game is the district's new ticketing system. DPS switched from Gofan to Hometown Ticketing for mobile tickets, allowing them to scan tickets when Wi-Fi is disconnected, which was an issue last year at Wayne State. All DPS sporting events are cashless.
"We are doing everything possible to make sure it is safe for our fans and community," Alexander said.
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Jared Ramsey covers high school sports for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at jramsey@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Want to attend huge Cass Tech vs King football game? Here's why you can't
