Ohio State does not need to play every Big Ten team every year to draw a crowd. Sometimes it only has to show up. Months before kickoff, Iowa’s biggest home game of the season is already off the board. 

It appears that the fans are itching to see OSU and Iowa battle it out on the field because Iowa announced Monday that the tickets for the Oct. 3 matchup with Ohio State at Kinnick Stadium have been sold out. For Hawkeye fans, a visit from the Buckeyes still feels like one of the few games worth circling the moment the schedule comes out. 

Conference expansion, divisional formats, and now the arrival of four West Coast schools have turned this into an occasional meeting rather than an annual one. That scarcity has only made Ohio State a bigger attraction whenever they appear. For Hawkeyes fans, there’s another reason this date has been circled for a long time. 

The last time Ohio State visited Kinnick was in 2017 when Iowa stunned the Buckeyes. The game ended with a 55-24 scoreline, where Nate Stanley threw four touchdown passes. The Hawkeyes turned that night into one of the biggest surprises in recent Big Ten memory, and it remains Iowa’s most recent win over the Buckeyes on their home turf.

That 2017 upset was followed by two convincing Ohio State wins. The Buckeyes rolled 54-10 in 2022 and won 35-7 in 2024 against Iowa. They now lead the all-time series 48-15. So it’s no surprise ESPN gives Ryan Day’s team the upper hand heading into October. The Buckeyes have an 87.6% chance to win, while Iowa sits at 12.4%.

Even so, Hawkeye fans are hoping something similar to 2017 happens once again in 2026 inside Kinnick Stadium. The sellout also keeps another streak alive. For Iowa, things could not be better on the business side. They now hold the record for 28 consecutive sold-out games at home since the 2022 season. Meanwhile, there are still tickets available for Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, Purdue, and Nebraska.

The ticket rush says something about both programs. Ohio State is coming off a 12-2 season. Its only losses came in the Big Ten Championship Game against eventual national champion Indiana and later in the playoffs against national runner-up Miami. Whether fans love or hate the Buckeyes, they still move the needle wherever they go. The demand isn’t limited to road games, either.

Ticket demand isn’t slowing down for Ohio State either

According to figures obtained by The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State sold 57,304 non-student season tickets for 2026. That’s up from 56,537 a year ago and the highest total the school has recorded since at least 2009. The school has now sold more than 56,000 season tickets in four of the last five seasons, and the numbers have kept inching upward since college football settled back into normal life after COVID.

The home schedule gives people plenty of reasons to buy in. Oregon comes to Columbus for its first road game there as a Big Ten member. Michigan is back too, making its first trip to Ohio Stadium since shocking the Buckeyes in 2024. Then there are conference games against Illinois, Maryland, and Northwestern, along with nonconference matchups versus Ball State and Kent State. It’s not the flashiest schedule from top to bottom, but the big games are more than enough to pack the place. As for fans hoping to make the trip to Iowa, the easy route is gone.

If you haven’t bought a ticket by now, you’re probably out of luck. The only real option left is the resale market, and those prices won’t be cheap. Ohio State doesn’t come through very often, and whenever the Buckeyes do, demand shoots up, and that’s what’s happened again this year.