Charlotte – Wednesday June 3rd, the ACC announced that Virginia’s opening week zero matchup against NC State would be relocated to Charlottesville after originally being scheduled for Brazil.
It was announced on December 1st, 2025, that UVA would open the year internationally for the first time ever against conference rival NC State. While many details are still unknown, it seemed as though a home game was taken away from Virginia having played in Raleigh a season ago. “The Brazil game was something that Virginia and NC State kind of came together on, and we started to talk about that opportunity.” The game seemed to be on for a long time approaching the season said ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, “Things seemed to be going along well over the course of the last seven or eight months.” However, Phillips explained that it was around May that things began to fall apart for the game to happen in Brazil. “I think it was in May, there was some serious doubt about whether the city and the area involved, the managing area involved, would be able to pull this game off.” There were multiple factors in the game being relocated, from logistics to even field safety. “I think it was an educated decision that you could leave it to chance and maybe there is an issue with the field,” Phillips explained, “Maybe there’s an issue with some logistical pieces of putting on an event, or we can bring it back home and have it be a true ACC Conference game on somebody’s home field. That’s what we determined was best.”
Relocating the game was one step for the ACC, however there was still more work to be done. The ACC and both schools wanted to keep the game as a week zero game at 3:30 to give it a national spotlight. “The second step was getting a chance to plead our case; this should still stay at week zero because both of those institutions and the conference office put together the entire ACC schedule based on some of the teams that were playing in week zero.”
The game being relocated was not the worst thing for Virginia, giving that extra conference home game to kick off the season. Since the game was relocated the University announced a “Sell out Scott” campaign, in an effort to sell out Scott Stadium for the first time since 2008.