The Northern Illinois Huskies’ football team will be joining the Mountain West Conference, leaving the Mid-American Conference that it had been a member of for nearly 30 years.
The Huskies will officially join the Mountain West as a football-only school beginning with the 2026 season, the conference announced on Tuesday.
According to a press release, there will be a total of nine teams in the conference for that season, with Air Force, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, San Jose State, UNLV, UTEP and Wyoming joining the Huskies in the conference.
“This is a truly exciting day for Northern Illinois University, for the NIU football program, and for Huskie fans throughout the country,” said NIU President Lisa C. Freeman. “We are extremely pleased to accept the invitation for the Huskie football program to join a prestigious group of universities to compete in the Mountain West Conference. This move will open new opportunities for our student-athletes, expand the reach, and strengthen the national brand of Huskie Football as they represent NIU and compete for championships the hard way and the right way.”
Northern Illinois is one of the teams coming into the conference after Boise State, Utah State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Colorado State all announced that they would be leaving the Mountain West to join the new-look Pac-12 beginning in 2026.
In response, UTEP announced that it would join the conference as a full member in 2026. UC-Davis and Grand Canyon University both will join the conference as non-football schools in 2026.
It is unclear which conference Northern Illinois will compete in for other sports, including basketball and volleyball, as the Mid-American Conference will not allow them to remain in the conference without their football team.
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The Huskies had joined the MAC in 1998, according to the conference’s website. They have won the conference’s football title on five occasions, most recently in 2021, and qualified for the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl earlier this season, which they won in an overtime thriller over Fresno State.
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