BootTrail · NCAA football recruiting

NCAA football recruiting calendar for families

A concise reference to the football recruiting rules and windows marked current in the supplied NCAA report. The report snapshot is dated October 19, 2026; it does not contain a complete date-by-date calendar for every division.

Use the status labels carefully. Only findings the report identifies as current appear below as current rules. Proposed, incomplete, or unverified calendar details are separated and are not presented as active rules.

Verified current in the supplied report

Division I: evaluation limits and specific windows

The report gives these evaluation rules for both FBS and FCS. They are limits and windows, not a school-by-school schedule of dates.

Evaluation days

42 evaluation days during the fall evaluation period.

168 evaluation days during the spring evaluation period.

Report source[3]

Evaluations per prospect

No more than three during the academic year: one in fall and two from April 15 through May 31.

Report source[3]

Off-campus contacts

The report states a limit of six off-campus contacts per prospect at any site for FBS and FCS.

Report source[3]

Off-campus recruiting staff

FBS: up to 11 staff members, including the head coach.

FCS: up to 13 staff members, including the head coach.

Only staff who regularly take part in on-campus coaching with student-athletes count toward these off-campus limits.

Report source[2]

FBS-specific current findings

  • A 31-calendar-day dead period begins July 1.[2]
  • From April 15 through May 31, head coaches cannot conduct off-campus recruiting, off-campus coaching clinics, visits to a prospect’s school, or off-campus meetings with the prospect’s coach.[3]

Division II

The report’s Division II overview says a school may conduct one on-campus tryout. It notes that a 2026–27 calendar exists, but that calendar was not retrieved; no recruiting dates are included here.[5]

Division III

The report states that Division III schools cannot hold practice tryouts with college-bound student-athletes. Specific football recruiting dates and windows were not established in the report.[5]

Pending · not an active calendar

FBS calendar changes awaiting approval

The report says these changes still require Division I Administrative Committee approval. Do not use them as current rules.[1]

  • A proposed transfer-portal window from January 2 through January 11.
  • A proposed full-December dead period, with calls, letters, texts, and email allowed but no on- or off-campus recruiting contacts or evaluations.
  • A proposed January 5–31 recruiting period.
  • A proposed five-day transfer-notification period after a postseason contest played on or after January 7.

What this report does not verify

  • Division II dead-period dates are described as proposals referred to committees, so they are not listed as current rules.[6]
  • Division II’s 2026–27 calendar was not retrieved, and Division III football date windows were not established in the report.[5]
  • Several FCS December, signing-period, and communication windows are marked unverified in the report table and are omitted from the current rules above.[2] [3] [4]
  • The report table marks the first-week-of-December early signing date as unverified; no signing date is included here.[2]
  • The report snapshot contains an isolated “11–14, 2026” fragment without enough context to identify an event or division; it is not used as a date.[1]

Source links and next check

The supplied report snapshot preserves citation numbers [1]–[6] but omits their bibliography and direct URLs. We cannot map those references to claim-level source links from the available material. For current NCAA materials, start with the NCAA’s recruiting overview and confirm a date-sensitive question with the target school’s compliance office.

NCAA recruiting overview