Auburn is one of only six Power 4 schools Notre Dame has never played in football. Michael Reaves / Getty Images

Notre Dame has made scheduling first-time opponents a priority. The Irish have also tried to add more SEC flavor to their future schedules. Now Auburn will check both boxes: The programs have formally agreed to a home-and-home series in 2027 and ’28. Sources close to the program have indicated the Auburn series has been a target for months.

Auburn will travel to Notre Dame for the first time in 2027, and the Irish will head to Jordan-Hare Stadium the following season. The series follows home-and-homes with Texas A&M, Arkansas and Georgia in recent seasons, with Texas, Alabama and Florida scheduled to rotate onto future Notre Dame schedules.

Schedule update 📆

Facing Auburn in 2027 and 2028#GoIrish☘️ pic.twitter.com/xYHFbuYy9p

— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) November 5, 2025

At a time when the Irish are working to extend their century-old series with USC, the influx of SEC opponents combined with the 12-year agreement with Clemson should give Notre Dame a scheduling foundation to help its case in College Football Playoff selection criteria that seemingly change by the year. The Notre Dame-Clemson series begins in 2027, with the Irish headed to Death Valley.

In the season that Notre Dame will make its first appearance at Jordan-Hare, the Irish are tentatively scheduled to play Texas, Arkansas, Clemson and Miami, all at home. If the USC series is extended, that year’s meeting would likely still be a road (or neutral-site) game for Notre Dame.

The Tigers, who fired head coach Hugh Freeze on Sunday amid a 1-5 start to SEC play, are set to play Middle Tennessee and Missouri State to round out their 2027 nonconference schedule.

As the CFP selection criteria evolve to focus more on schedule strength, the theory is programs will be more open to testing themselves out-of-conference — or in the case of Notre Dame, beyond its traditional rivals and its ACC slate. How that actually plays out is less clear. For every Ohio State vs. Texas or Notre Dame vs. Texas A&M matchup in September, there are nonconference slates like those of Indiana and Penn State, both of which were devoid of Power 4 competition.

Future scheduling mandates for the ACC and SEC require schools from both conferences to play Power 4 competition outside of the conference. The Big Ten does not impose the same rule on top of its nine-game conference schedule, which might make it harder for Notre Dame to add Big Ten teams to future schedules, though Purdue and Michigan State are already included on future slates, and Notre Dame and Michigan seem open to renewing their rivalry, which has been dormant since 2019.

As Notre Dame attempts to play a national schedule that touches each of the Power 4 conferences, series like a home-and-home with Auburn help the Irish get there. Meanwhile, the list of Power 4 teams Notre Dame has never played will shrink to five: Texas Tech, Kansas State, UCF, Mississippi State and Kentucky.

Nov 5, 2025

Connections: Sports Edition

Spot the pattern. Connect the terms

Find the hidden link between sports terms

Pete Sampson is a staff writer for The Athletic on the Notre Dame football beat, a program he’s covered for the past 24 seasons. The former editor and co-founder of Irish Illustrated, Pete has covered six different regimes in South Bend, reporting on the Fighting Irish from the end of the Bob Davie years through the Marcus Freeman era.