Eventually, someone is going to have to explain to me precisely why it took until June 22nd to announce the 2026 Marquette men’s soccer schedule.
The closest thing I have to an explanation is “Northern Illinois is being a pokey little puppy about setting a start time for the August 27th match in their building,” but that’s no excuse for Marquette to twiddle their thumbs and do nothing.
The reason why I’m ever so slightly frustrated about this other than it took about a month longer than it took last
year to announce the slate? This schedule kind of stinks. It’s not bad for what Marquette is heading into David Korn’s third season in charge, fresh off a year where the Golden Eagles went 1-7-0 in Big East play. There’s just nothing on this slate that qualifies as Korn challenging his team, up to and including a home contest against Carroll, a Division 3 team from Waukesha that wasn’t even that good last year. Maybe that’s why there was a delay: Korn was trying to get another Division 1 game in there but just ended up coming up short. Then again, there’s been matches against non-D1 Edgewood in each of his first two seasons, so maybe not.
Let’s get into the details of what’s on this year’s slate, shall we?
After a pair of exhibition matches — at Purdue Fort Wayne and at home against UW-Parkside — Marquette gets the season going for real on Thursday, August 20th, with a home match against Oakland. The two sides have not met since 2004 when this was a yearly series for a little while. The Golden Grizzlies have won four straight in the series to land Marquette at 2-6-0 all time against Oakland. Three days later, it’s another home match, this time against Saint Mary’s. This will be the first ever meeting with the Gaels.
The next weekend gives Marquette a Thursday/Monday road trip, but they won’t be straying far from Milwaukee. First up is Northern Illinois to renew a series that MU leads 17-12-2 all time. However, the Huskies have won the last two and Marquette hasn’t won since getting an overtime victory in the spring 2021 season. The other road game is a visit to Wisconsin. Marquette didn’t play the Badgers last season because of the car crash that killed two MU lacrosse players, which means that and COVID is the only things that have stopped a UW/MU match since 1964. Wisconsin leads the all time series 19-33-11.
The schedule gets topsy-turvy after that, as MU won’t play again until the following Saturday when they host Northwestern. The Golden Eagles are 17-6-1 all time against the Wildcats, although MU hasn’t beaten NU since 2016. Then it’s a mid-week home match against St. Thomas, which is the one in Minnesota, not the one in Canada, no matter what the actual schedule page says. This will be the first ever meeting with the Tommies, but we can’t say the same thing for Saturday’s opponent, which is Southern Indiana. Even though the Screaming Eagles came up to Division 1 relatively recently, they apparently used to play Division 1 soccer back in the day at the very least, as Marquette beat them 1-0 back in 1994.
Marquette moves on to start Big East play after that with a visit to Georgetown, but that’s not the end of non-conference matches. There’s the Milwaukee Cup match against UW-Milwaukee, which is set for September 22nd at Valley Fields this season. Marquette might be 12-31-6 all time against the Panthers, but MU has held the Milwaukee Cup since 2022 thanks to a pair of ties and a victory on the East Side last season. Marquette wraps up non-conference action on October 6th with the aforementioned match against Carroll.
Three of Marquette’s last five Big East matches are at home, which could give the Golden Eagles a nice runway to try to qualify for the conference tournament for the first time since the spring 2021 season and the first time in a normal season since 2019. With that said, MU has had a winning record in league play just once in the past seven seasons — that was the spring 2021 campaign — so perhaps achieving that goal should be the starting point.
By the way: Only three of Marquette’s non-conference opponents finished the 2025 season with a winning record. Northern Illinois was 8-5-4, Northwestern was 8-6-3, and St. Thomas was 7-5-5. Of course, that’s saying “more wins than losses,” if you compare wins and non-wins, none of MU’s non-con foes won a majority of their matches last season. No, that’s not a great way to go about preparing for Big East play where Marquette has a chance to face multiple NCAA tournament caliber opponents, but it could be a way for David Korn to merely stack W’s, something that’s been lacking in his first two seasons.
Here’s the full schedule for the Marquette men’s soccer 2026 season.
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