Illinois head coach Bret Bielema has elected to not host a exhibition game in front of fans inside Memorial Stadium before the end of the 2026 spring practice season.

By Matt Stevens - IlliniGuys Football Writer/Analyst

March 23, 2026

CHAMPAIGN — For the second straight occasion and third time in the six-year tenure of Illinois head coach Bret Bielema, there will be no Orange-Blue intra-squad game to conclude its spring football season.

“I’m well aware we’ve got a new defensive scheme and I’m probably going to keep the amount of information, and especially the visual information to go along with that, at a minimum,” Bielema said on Monday.

The second reason for the ongoing installation of the largest main video display in college football, which will include 16 LED displays and will be more than 26,750 square feet and 30 million pixels at Gies Memorial Stadium. This project of removing the scoreboard and videoboard in the south end zone has already begun just outside of Kirby Avenue and electrical power to the stadium will be need to be parodically shut off to accommodate the full installation of the new videoboard, which will measure approximately 69 feet high by 250 feet wide.

Illinois will conduct its first spring football practice inside Gies Memorial Stadium on Monday night and will be back out on the field Wednesday morning with the conclusion of the first week being a Friday night practice session. All 15 of the Illini’s spring practices over the next two months will be closed to the public.

Bielema is going through a major transition of his coaching staff, especially on the defensive side of the ball, where nine of the 28 assistant coaches will be in first year of the program and some of the returnees on the staff have been promoted or moved to new positional rooms. On the defensive side, Illinois have not only brought over Hauck, a 14-year veteran head coach at Montana, as the play-caller but will also have a new secondary coach, inside linebackers coach, defensive ends coach and defensive line/run game coordinator.

“You know what is funny? I’ve always thought the spring game is the biggest waste of time in our entire year,” Hauck said on Monday. “You got a bunch of guys where you don’t play half of them. It’s on TV and every coach hates that. If you got new players or coaches, nobody wants to show that. Our defensive coordinator at Montana was (current Illinois secondary coach) Ronnie Bradford and I told him once that ‘hey look, this is going to be an offensive showcase where you’re going to have two calls and they’ll be firing your ass in the newspapers on Saturday. Just so you know’ I don’t really care one bit about the spring game.”

On the offensive side, Illinois must replace its three-year starting quarterback, four offensive line starters along with its leading wide receiver in catches and yards from the 2025 campaign.

Illinois has not hosted a spring game in three of Bielema’s six spring seasons since he took the head coaching position in Dec. 2020. The Illini failed to have a spring game in 2023 and 2025 but an extreme thunderstorm was what cancelled the 2023 spring game slated to be broadcasted on Big Ten Network. However, in 2023, Bielema elected to have an open scrimmage for fans free of charge inside Memorial Stadium on the following evening. Illinois elected to not have a spring game before the 2025 season as well.

In late April 2024, the last spring game Bielema conducted in front of fans inside Memorial Stadium, Luke Altmyer went 10-for-14 with 116 yards and two touchdowns in the game where he only played the first half. Aidan Laughery, who is projected to compete for the starting role at tailback this spring, totaled 70 yards on the ground across his 11 carries in the 2024 spring game, while he also tacked on a receiving score.