Indiana-Kentucky basketball: We now know where, when regular-season rivalry will resume

Since October 2022, it’s been known that Kentucky is set to renew its regular season men’s basketball rivalry series with Indiana.

Now, we know when and where each game in the series will be played in a few years’ time.

Kentucky and Indiana’s four-game series (starting with the 2025-26 season) will feature two games in Lexington, one in Indianapolis and one in Bloomington, Indiana.

UK and Indiana will resume their regular-season series on the following dates and at the following locations:

▪ Dec. 20, 2025 at Rupp Arena.

▪ Dec. 27, 2026 at Lucas Oil Stadium (Indianapolis).

▪ Dec. 18, 2027 at Rupp Arena.

▪ Dec. 16, 2028 at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall (Bloomington, Indiana).

“This is a really important rivalry to our fans and the game of college basketball and we’re happy to bring it back,” UK head coach John Calipari said in a Tuesday news release announcing the return of the rivalry.

“It’s great to renew this series, which is among the most competitive rivalries and storied traditions of college basketball,” added UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart in the news release. “The matchup will resume its place as one of the nation’s most anticipated games of the season.”

At the Southeastern Conference media day prior to the 2022-23 season, Calipari initially announced the return of the IU-UK rivalry series.

Famously, Kentucky and Indiana have not played in the regular season since 2011, when IU defeated UK on a buzzer-beater by Christian Watford in Bloomington that led to a chaotic court-storming at Assembly Hall.

The more than 14-year interruption between regular-season games (assuming the 2025 game goes ahead as scheduled) would represent the longest gap in the series between IU and UK since they went 21 years between regular-season meetings from 1944 to 1965.

Kentucky and Indiana had played each other in the regular season in 43 consecutive seasons — starting with the 1969-70 season — before the series was discontinued following that 2011 game.

The series was played mainly on each school’s home court before it transitioned to a neutral-site series — alternating between Louisville and Indianapolis over a 15-year period — starting with the 1991-92 season.

IU and UK returned to playing against each other on their home courts in 2006, and each program got three home games in before the series was discontinued.

In total across those 43 straight regular-season games, the Hoosiers and Wildcats played 13 times in Bloomington, 10 times in Lexington, 10 times in Indianapolis and 10 times in Louisville.

But that famed 2011 game wasn’t the most recent on-court meeting between the two schools.

In the 2012 NCAA Tournament regional semifinals, UK toppled IU 102-90 on its way to the school’s most recent national championship.

The schools last faced each other in the 2016 NCAA Tournament, when Indiana beat Kentucky 73-67 in the second round.

UK leads the all-time series between the schools, 32-25.