The 2026 Big Ten outdoor track and field championships open at Nebraska's brand-new outdoor facility in Lincoln on Friday 15 May and run through Sunday 17 May, the league's first outdoor crown to be contested under the expanded 18-team membership that swept in Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington last summer. The host Huskers are favoured in three field events — the men's and women's high jump and the men's javelin — while a USC sprint corps and an Oregon distance group are expected to dominate the men's and women's track scoring respectively.
Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen said in his opening media availability that the new facility, sited just north of the Bob Devaney Sports Center, was finished on schedule in late April and tested at the Husker Last Chance meet on 2 May. The track is a Beynon Sports BSS 200 surface, the same compound laid for the 2024 Olympic Trials warm-up venue at Hayward Field, with eight lanes on the straight and nine on the turn. Permanent grandstand capacity is 3,500, with temporary tribunes lifting Big Ten weekend capacity to a sold-out 6,800.
On the men's side, USC headlines the sprint events with reigning NCAA outdoor 100m champion Joseph Fahnbulleh, who opens his Big Ten campaign at the meet after a season debut at the Penn Relays last month. Iowa's Aayden Glanton and Indiana's Donovan Louis are projected as the two main 110m hurdles contenders. In the distances, Oregon's Simeon Birnbaum and Wisconsin's Adam Spencer give the league two sub-3:35 1,500m runners on the same start line for the first time since 2018, and Northwestern's Aidan Ryan returns from indoor 5,000m bronze medal form.
On the women's side, Oregon's distance roster — Mia Barnett, Diana Cherotich and Ella Donaghu — is the deepest in the league and is forecast to deliver close to a clean sweep of the 800m through 10,000m. USC senior Kennedy Blackmon is the field's headline 100m hurdler, and a Nebraska throws bloc led by Axelina Johansson and Burger Lambrechts gives the home crowd realistic medal chances in shot put and discus on Sunday afternoon. The combined-events programme of decathlon and heptathlon runs across the Friday and Saturday, with Iowa's Peyton Haack the defending women's champion.
The Big Ten Network televises the opening night live from 5pm Central on Friday and the Sunday distance-and-relays finale from 1pm; Saturday's field-event programme streams on B1G+ with selected live cuts to the linear network. The meet doubles as the final tune-up for the NCAA East and West regionals on 27–30 May, and although the regional declaration deadline does not close until 25 May, several of the league's projected medal contenders — including Birnbaum and Blackmon — have indicated they will use Lincoln to chase regional auto-qualifying marks rather than play strategic placings for team points.