Starting next fall, football teams in Illinois will have more chances to make their way to a state championship.
The Illinois High School Association member schools approved all 12 amendment proposals that appeared on the all-school ballot during the annual by-law referendum process that concluded on Monday. The voting was independently certified on Tuesday morning.
There were several significant changes approved by the membership, including expansion of the IHSA Football Playoffs from 32 teams per class to 48 teams per class, increasing the number of total playoff qualifiers from 256 qualifiers to 384. There are no changes to the number of playoff classes in football, which remains at eight. The season start date remains the same (August 10 in 2026), but the first regular-season games will be played one week earlier (August 20 in 2026), eliminating the Week Zero scrimmage.
“Too often throughout the years, football decisions have negatively impacted other sports at IHSA schools,” said IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson. ” We are hopeful that this football playoff expansion will provide intended relief to our schools by stabilizing conference movement and eliminating the difficulty of scheduling football games that many of our schools face each year. It may create some short-term complications for some schools, conferences, and coaches, but we remain optimistic it will create long-term stability in football and beyond.”
Other significant changes include the IHSA Board of Directors expanding from 11 elected members to 15 elected members, with four new seats being created specifically for Superintendents (or Presidents, Heads of School, etc.). Cooperative sports teams made-up of 3,500 students or more will no longer be eligible to compete for IHSA State Series team awards, while the IHSA’s no-contact period in the summer will be moved from early August to the week of the Fourth of July beginning this summer.
Over 90 percent of the IHSA’s 802 member high schools took part in the 2025 voting process. Below is a summary of the proposals and the vote totals. (The numbers in parentheses indicate the total of Yes-No-No Opinion votes. For an amendment to pass, Yes votes must outnumber No votes).