Photo courtesy: Calgary Stampeders

The CFL schedule release makes for a nice palette cleanser for fans of teams based outside Saskatchewan whose squads didn’t take home the ultimate prize.

While Rider Nation looks to a repeat, fans in other markets can dream about what might be in 2026.

In Calgary, the schedule is less than favourable for the team in 2026 with some very difficult travel, including short weeks on the road, and a lot of distance between their three bye weeks.

Plenty of preseason practice

When training camp opens, the Stampeders will be trying to build on last season’s successes as Calgary doubled their win total from the season before, but ultimately fell short in the playoffs.

With two preseason games taking place inside Alberta 11 days apart, one at home against Saskatchewan and the other in Edmonton, the Stamps should have a ton of time to implement schemes and see players in practice before the final exhibition game on Friday, May 29.

Not having to travel far, with lots of time between games, should give the Stampeders the time to get off on the right foot when the games begin to count. However, the mitigating factor in this is both Calgary and Saskatchewan play a full four days before the rest of the league.

While it is far too soon to know how much change each team will be dealing with, playing a game that early in camp could be detrimental to some new players chances of truly making an impact.

Stampede Bowl returns

A highlight on the league schedule last year was the inaugural Stampede Bowl and it returns this year with a bit of a twist.

It is not a guarantee that John Hufnagel will be travelling with the Toronto Argos in his new role as special advisor, but if he does it would mark his first return to Calgary after spending 17 years patrolling McMahon Stadium in every possible upper management role since 2008.

There’s no word yet on the halftime act, but it will take some doing to outperform last year’s Bret Michael’s show that proved the Poison front man could still Talk Dirty to (Us).

Where did you go? 

For a team trying to reconnect with their fanbase and bring them back to the oldest stadium in the league, the schedule does them no favours.

After the Stampede Bowl, the team will spend four of the next five weeks on the road, including a 26-day stretch between home games as they play three in a row in other stadiums.

That trip may end up without the Stampeders bothering to return home as they play the Ticats on Saturday, August 1 and have the Argos in Toronto just five days later on a Thursday night.

The team will have another 28-day stretch without a home game as they go out to Ottawa, Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg in the later stages of the season.

Assuming they fly home between those games, the team will travel nearly 9,500 kilometres in that stretch. Less than ideal for games 15 to 17 of a season.

No rest for the wicked

On three occasions, the Stampeders have just five days between games.

The first will be against the Argos in the Stampede Bowl, with the Stampeders getting one fewer days rest than their opponents.

Less than a month later, the Argos again get a tired Calgary squad, but will have the advantage of a full bye week to prepare.

Finally, the Elks and Stamps will be on even footing in the Labour Day rematch in Edmonton in September.

Athletic training staff will be working overtime to ensure everyone stays as healthy as possible.

Bye, bye, bye

The Stampeders bye weeks are fairly spread out with Week 2 an early chance to reset, one near the middle in Week 12, and one in the final week of the season.

If the team continues to improve and move up the standings and ends up hosting a West Final, they would see a full three weeks rest before the game that would decide the West Division.

If they make the playoffs but don’t host the West Final, that break could prove vital to getting healthy before a playoff run.

However, with nine games and eight games respectively between byes, the Stampeders will be needing to manage their health.

Back-to-backs

They say familiarity breeds contempt, and so we may see some additional laundry on the field in the form of flags if that turns out to be the case for Calgary this year.

Three times they play the same team in a home and away set and don’t play those teams again anywhere on the regular season calendar.

Montreal, Ottawa, and Edmonton will all get to see the Stamps twice in a row and not again in the regular season.

Vancouver? I hardly knew her

The Lions and Bombers make up the two extra divisional opponents for the Stampeders this year, with the Lions coming to Calgary twice and the Stamps travelling to the home of the Bombers.

However, due to the FIFA World Cup taking place partly in Vancouver during the season, the Stampeders will not be playing in Vancouver, but instead will go to Kelowna to face Nathan Rourke and the Lions in their lone road game against the Vancouver-based club.

And finally

All things considered, this schedule isn’t as kind as a fan would hope and with a first-round playoff game scheduled for Halloween, it only gets a little worse as things go on.

That said, with so much time to plan, at least CFL fans that want to travel to games have lots of advance warning of where to be and when.