A series that dates back to 1894 and has featured 129 meetings between the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers will not occur in 2026, largely due to complications with conference realignment. And now, per a report by The Oregonian, the matchup long known as the “Civil War” before being renamed to “The Rivalry Game,” will not be played in 2027 as well.
Conference realignment decimated PAC-12 football following the 2023 season, as the Ducks departed for the Big Ten while Oregon State remained in a holding pattern, holding dearly to the PAC-12 alongside the Washington State Cougars.
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The two teams were de-facto Mountain West Conference participants in 2024 before acting as independents in 2025, with Oregon State hosting oddball opponents such as Sam Houston State and Lafayette and traveling to App State and Tulsa, among others.
For the 2026 campaign, the Beavers and Cougars brought the PAC-12 — in the form of an eight-team football league — back together, complete with a handful of Mountain West schools and Texas State.
Meanwhile, Oregon has settled in nicely in the Big Ten, as this coming fall will be their third season in the conference.
The newness of the PAC-12, which also features a “flex” game against an undetermined conference opponent late in the season, may have had a factor in the Ducks and Beavers not being able to schedule a game in 2027, a year in which there was belief that the rivalry would return.
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“We weren’t able to do that,” Oregon State Athletic Director Scott Barnes told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “That was on our side.”
Despite that, the two sides are still working on renewing the rivalry in the future — possibly as soon as 2028 as part of a four-year home-and-home deal, according to Barnes.
While the rivalry game played at the end of the season for the Ducks has been replaced by a battle against the Washington Huskies, the history of the meeting with the Beavers is something that is paramount to football in the state of Oregon however you look at it.
This is not an Ohio-Ohio State situation, where the two in-state foes rarely meet due to being so far apart in conference level.
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Oregon and Oregon State are separated by roughly 50 miles and have competed against one another since the 1800’s. It’s a rivalry that betters the game of football in the state of Oregon and while it won’t be played over the next two years, it should be a noted positive that the two sides appear actively close to renewing the series for four more years beginning in 2028.
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This article originally appeared on Ducks Wire: Oregon and Oregon State rivalry will not take place in 2027
