Just in the nick of time before June started, Marquette announced the 2026 volleyball schedule on Thursday morning. That means our long national nightmare without anything more than the already announced opener against Texas
on the schedule as the next Marquette athletics event after the track & field season ended lasted 11 full days.As mentioned, we already knew that Marquette would start the season at Fiserv Forum against Texas on August 24th as part of the AVCA’s First Serve event which is being
hosted in Milwaukee this season. Marquette is 0-1 against Texas, and this will be the first regular season meeting between the two teams since the previous encounter was the Longhorns getting a 3-1 win in Austin in the 2022 Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. UT is coming off an Elite 8 run in a 26-4 season where they were the #1 seed in the region but got knocked out by Wisconsin.
After that, it’s going to be a minute before the Golden Eagles play in Milwaukee again. Their next four contests, spread across the next two weekends, are all on the road. Only one of the weekends is a traditional “go somewhere and play a few teams” weekend, though. MU’s first weekend of action will be in southwestern Ohio, as the Golden Eagles head out there to visit both Dayton and Wright State. This was a fun experience in remembering that Wright State is in Dayton, not the Cleveland area. In any case, Dayton is coming off a 23-7 season that left them short of the NCAA tournament after losing in the A-10 tournament, and I feel slightly bad about that because they lost two matches in Milwaukee, including one against MU, after the tragic death of two MU men’s lacrosse players canceled the rest of the weekend of action. WSU went to the NCAA field last season and finished the year 21-11 after losing to #3 seed Purdue in the first round.
One week later, Marquette will be out in California for a Saturday/Sunday pairing, and yes, it’s deeply funny that MU is going all the way out there to play South Florida. This will be the first meeting with the Bulls since The Reformation split the pair out of the same conference for the first time in a long time. USF was just 17-13 last year, but they did win The American and get into the NCAA field where they lost 3-1 to #8 seed Penn State. The host for these matches? Stanford, who is MU’s opponent on Sunday. The Cardinal won 29 games last season for their fourth straight year with at last 27 wins, but the #2 seed was knocked out of the NCAA tournament in the Sweet 16 by — wait for it — Wisconsin.
Next up for Marquette is an interesting schedule trick. They’re going to go home and road with Illinois, with the Milwaukee game on Friday and the Champaign game on Sunday. I was a little surprised to findout that the Illini were just 13-16 last season because my memory of them is the three NCAA losses that the Golden Eagles took on against them in the NCAA tournament over the past decade-plus.
MU’s non-conference schedule wraps up with three games in the state of Wisconsin. The first is a Thursday visit to Wisconsin, fresh off the Badgers going to the Final Four last season and finishing 28-5. That sounds unnerving for a Marquette team that’s going to be freshman-heavy in the fall, but hey: MU’s only Division 1 era win over the Badgers came in Madison. After that, it’s back to the McGuire Center for the only two other home games in non-conference play. It’ll be St. Thomas on Saturday, September 19th and then Milwaukee 24 hours later. This will be MU’s first meeting with the Tommies since they moved up to Division 1, and they’re coming off a 21-10 season where they came damn close to upsetting #5 seed Iowa State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Milwaukee was not quite as successful last season, finishing 11-21 which caused them to miss out on a third straight 20 win season. Marquette has won 15 straight matches with the Panthers, which is fun.
That brings us along to Big East play. The league is doing a 16 game schedule this season, just like last year. This means that there will be just one match against UConn and Providence on the road — which happens to be the first two of the campaign — and one match against Butler and Xavier. Those will come in late October as part of a four game homestand, the only time all year that MU is playing more than two in a row at home.
The other part of Big East play that we have to mention is the pair of games against perennial league favorite Creighton. The road one is the first of the two, and that will be MU’s first match of October. The Golden Eagles will then close the month out by hosting the Bluejays as the fourth match in that four game homestand I mentioned a moment ago.
Short version of all of this: Marquette head coach Tom Mendoza did not shy away from challenging his team, even though he’s nearly completely revamping his lineup from last season. He even said as much in the press release on the schedule:
“Last year we had a top-15 strength of schedule, and great players come to Marquette because they can play at the highest level of Division I volleyball while getting a more personalized college experience than a massive state school can offer. We are excited to release our 2026 schedule, as it achieves all three goals we look for: to play at the highest level of Division I volleyball, to provide a path to achieve our season goals, and to bring high-level volleyball matches to Milwaukee both this fall and in future home guarantees” Mendoza said of the upcoming season slate.
Here’s the 2026 Marquette volleyball schedule, with all but two starting times. I think it’s safe to guess that we’re waiting on Fox Sports/Big Ten Network to make a decision on those two.
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