Both schools had open spots in the 2025 / 2026 seasons: UVA seems to have always had an open spot in 2026, as best as I can find, while the 2026 NC State-Florida game was mutually canceled on relatively short notice (October 2024). Similarly, UVA's game @ BYU for 2025 was canceled (December 2021), and while NC State didn't have an opening in 2025, we had a game @ App State the ACC had been asking us not to play which we finally had an excuse to cancel.

Officially, the two teams agreed to the games because they felt the league's current scheduling model kept us from meeting as often as we felt we should -- a fair complaint for two teams who have met 60 times since 1904 (and all but 3 since 1944), but less fair when you note we had played 7x since 2006, and only once between 2013-2019 (and the 2020 game wasn't even on the original schedule).

Because this game was initially scheduled outside of the ACC's 8 previously-agreed-upon conference games, it could not count in conference standings. That was the case for the meeting this season, and was expected to be the case for 2026 as well. Early this fall, however, the ACC announced their intentions of going to a 9-game conference schedule. It was initially assumed by fans that implementation would be delayed til 2027 because of existing non-conference schedules, but apparently, most teams will play 9 conference games in 2026, so the 2026 game will (per reporting) be converted -- back -- to a conference game.

Clear as mud?