MANHATTAN, Kan. After reaching the NCAA Tournament for the 19th time and the first under head coach Jason Mansfield K-State volleyball released its full 2026 schedule on Thursday.
“I’m really looking forward to competing this fall,” said Mansfield, now entering his fourth year guiding the Wildcats. “We’ve built a tough non-conference slate with several tournament-level teams and programs that are perennial contenders in their leagues.”
K-State’s 26-match lineup includes 11 teams that made the NCAA Tournament last season, nine of which come from the Big 12 the conference that led the country with 10 qualifiers. Eight of those teams appeared in the final AVCA Top 25, while K-State earned votes in the poll.
“The Big 12 will once again be demanding from top to bottom,” Mansfield noted. “Last year we had 10 teams reach the tournament, and I could easily see similar depth again. With so much coaching talent and so many strong players in this league, every match will be a fight.”
The Wildcats begin the year with two exhibitions: August 13 at Missouri State and August 22 at home against Oklahoma in Morgan Family Arena.
K-State’s regular season opens August 28–30 with the K-State Invitational, hosting Texas A&M–Corpus Christi and Campbell. The team stays home the next weekend to welcome CSUN and Drake (Sept. 4–6) before heading to Reno, Nevada, to face Weber State and Nevada (Sept. 11–13). Non-conference play concludes with a road trip to Omaha to take on Creighton and Omaha (Sept. 18–19).
Big 12 action begins September 24 at UCF, with the conference home opener set for September 27 against Houston.
The first half of league play also includes home matches against BYU (Oct. 1), Utah (Oct. 3), and the first Sunflower Showdown vs. Kansas (Oct. 15). Road trips include Iowa State (Oct. 9), Colorado (Oct. 11), and Cincinnati (Oct. 22).
The rivalry series with Kansas continues October 30 in Lawrence. K-State then visits TCU on November 1.
The Wildcats close the season with a heavy home stretch featuring Cincinnati (Nov. 6), Baylor (Nov. 8), TCU (Nov. 13), and West Virginia on Senior Day (Nov. 22). A visit to Texas Tech awaits on November 19.
K-State wraps up the regular season with back-to-back road matches at Arizona State (Nov. 25) and Arizona (Nov. 27).
Season tickets for 2026 will be available beginning in June, with promotional and broadcast details to be released later.
K-State enters 2026 with seven newcomers joining eight returners from last year’s squad, which finished 18–10 overall and 10–8 in Big 12 play the program’s best record under Mansfield and its highest win total since 2016.
Leave a Reply