High school football in NE Georgia: Complete coverage for the 2026 season
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ATHENS — Hip-hip hooray! Another high school football season is here!
Welcome to the headquarters for all things northeast Georgia football, a continuous collection of the Athens Banner-Herald’s coverage for the 2026 season. Here, you’ll find links to all the stories from the 12-week regular season and playoffs in the Athens area, including player highlights, weekly game content and features, as well as offseason content leading into the 2027 summer practices.
Regardless of the colors you bear under the white hot Friday night lights, it’s shaping up to be another good fall.
🏈 Week 1
This will be updated the week of August 17.
📆 Schedules
Football can begin padded practices Monday, July 27. The regular season begins Friday, Aug. 21 and will run until Friday, Nov. 6 when playoff qualifiers are determined.
The first round of playoffs is tentatively set for Nov. 13, with the second round Nov. 20, quarterfinals Nov. 27, semifinals Dec. 4 and the finals at Mercedes Benz Stadium Dec. 15-16. Flag football and football will be on separate dates this year due to expansion.
🔀 Bi-annual realignment period
The GHSA classifications have also been renumbered this year. Class A-Divisions I and II have been divorced and turned into Classes A and 2A. This has pushed everything up a level — for example, what was Class 3A in 2025 will now be Class 4A, so on and so forth — and Class 7A has been reintroduced to account for space.
These jumps are not as big as they look for schools like East Jackson and Jefferson, as everyone is really only moving up one classification.
East Jackson was in the 2025 Class 2A, which is the 2026 Class 3A, and it will be moving up to the 2026 Class 4A. Likewise, Jefferson was in the 2025 Class 3A, which is the 2026 Class 4A, and it will be moving up to the 2026 Class 5A. The only two schools not moving classifications are Prince Avenue Christian and Winder-Barrow.
🏆 2025 state playoff recap
The 2025 season saw one team make it to the Benz for a GHSA state title game. For the second year in a row, though led by a different quarterback, Jefferson fell runner-up in the Class 3A competition, this time to Sandy Creek, 27-7. The Dragons had failed to develop offensive rhythm and were worn down to the bone on defense. Their only touchdown came on an 82-yard kickoff return from wide receiver/corner back Chance Payne, who is at Minnesota.
🏆 Players of the week
This will be updated following the completion of week one.
🎠 Who’s in charge: Coaching carousel
There are some new faces in the Athens area this season. Of the 18 schools in our coverage zone, four introduced new leaders, including Apalachee, Athens Christian, East Jackson and Winder-Barrow.
👀 Players to watch: Hidden games
The Athens gridiron is rich with talent, and this season is no different.
This will be updated in early August.
📓 Recruiting
The NCAA eliminated the National Letter of Intent, or NLI, in October 2024, meaning the classes of 2025 and on don’t have to actually ink their names on a dotted line for the first time since 1964.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: High school football in NE Georgia: Complete coverage for the 2026 season
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