The NCAA is officially moving transfer portal season in college football from December to January.
The Division I Administrative Committee voted Tuesday to adopt the proposed dates of Jan. 2-16 as the new transfer portal window for all FBS and FCS players in 2026.
College football players, including graduate transfers, now must wait until Jan. 2 to officially enter their names in the NCAA transfer portal and initiate contact with other schools. The reform is expected to be finalized at the conclusion of the Administrative Committee's meetings on Wednesday.
The new 15-day transfer portal windows opens one day after College Football Playoff quarterfinals conclude. Players on the two teams competing in the CFP national championship game on Jan. 19 will get an additional five-day period from Jan. 20 to 24 to enter the portal after their season ends.
The Division I Administrative Committee also approved a reform around the transfer window exception granted to football players after a head coaching change. Effective immediately, starting five days after a new head coach is hired or announced, players will have a 15-day window to enter their names in the portal.
Until now, players were given a 30-day window to enter the portal immediately after a coaching change, which can lead to large numbers of players departing a program before the arrival of the next head coach.
Players at Arkansas, Oklahoma State, UCLA and Virginia Tech will be grandfathered in under the previous rule and are currently permitted to enter the transfer portal after head coaches at those programs were fired in September.
The FBS and FCS oversight committees initially proposed moving to a 10-day portal window in January but agreed to extend the window to 15 days in response to student-athlete feedback.
The Division I Administrative Council had already eliminated the 15-day spring transfer window in college football last month, formally moving the sport to a single offseason period for transfer activity.
While FBS head coaches have been pushing for a single transfer window since January, there are still expected to be challenges to this reform in the months ahead. Attorney Tom Mars wrote on X last week that "experienced antitrust lawyers will be at the courthouse before the sun comes up" to contest the new 15-day window as overly restrictive.
During the 2024-25 school year, more than 4,900 FBS players and more than 3,200 FCS players entered their names in the NCAA transfer portal in another record-setting year for transfer movement.