Big Ten Championship Odds 2026: All 18 Teams, Scored

Updated August 9, 2026 · 18 min read · by Sam Smith

The Quick Answer

Big Ten championship odds for 2026 read as a three-team market on Kalshi: Ohio State at 30.5 cents, Oregon at 25.5, Indiana at 23.5, and then a cliff to USC at 6.5. Seven AI models scored all 18 teams without being shown a single price, and they built a noticeably wider race. The panel gives that same top three a combined 59.6% where the market, de-vigged, charges 75.7%. Sixteen points of Big Ten championship probability that the market assigns to three teams, the models hand to the other fifteen. The team that collects the largest single share of it is Penn State, which went 3-6 in this league last season and drew a 2026 schedule that misses all three favorites. The full board, every model's number, and the schedule quirk that moved almost every seat are below.

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New to this kind of market? Our guide to betting college football on Kalshi explains how event contracts settle before you read a board like this one.

Prices As Of August 9, 2026

Every price here is the midpoint of Kalshi's live bid and ask, read on August 9, 2026. The season has not started: the earliest Big Ten game on the 2026 schedule is Saturday, August 29, and the championship game is Saturday, December 5.

The board is worth reading carefully because it is lopsided in an unusual way. Eight teams carry a quote with a bid behind it. The other ten sit at a 0-cent bid and a 1-cent ask — a displayed market, but a very thin one — and they appear below as "under 1¢" rather than a false decimal. Yet the busiest contract on the whole board is one of those: UCLA, at under a cent, has traded 63,896 contracts. Nebraska has traded 49,260 and Northwestern 39,704. Ohio State, the favorite, has traded 11,023. Volume on this board is concentrated in the tail, not the top. That is lifetime traded volume, not current depth: a 0-cent bid and a 1-cent ask is a thin quote today no matter how much has changed hands over the life of the contract. Prices refresh as the story moves and the stamp above travels with them.

The Board

Team	2025 Big Ten	Kalshi	AI blend
Ohio State	9-1	30.5¢	21.4%
Indiana	10-0	23.5¢	19.2%
Oregon	8-1	25.5¢	19.0%
Penn State	3-6	4.5¢	7.6%
USC	7-2	6.5¢	7.0%
Michigan	7-2	5.5¢	6.7%
Washington	5-4	2.5¢	4.1%
Iowa	6-3	1.5¢	3.8%
Illinois	5-4	<1¢	2.5%
Nebraska	4-5	<1¢	1.9%
Minnesota	5-4	<1¢	1.8%
Northwestern	4-5	<1¢	1.1%
UCLA	3-6	<1¢	1.0%
Wisconsin	2-7	<1¢	1.0%
Rutgers	2-7	<1¢	0.6%
Michigan State	1-8	<1¢	0.6%
Maryland	1-8	<1¢	0.4%
Purdue	0-9	<1¢	0.3%

Team conference records in this table include the 2025 Big Ten Championship Game. Head-coach conference records quoted later in this article are reproduced as the source records them, and are not always kept on the same basis.

More live boards from the same panel: College Football Playoff odds 2026, where Ohio State is 75.5¢ to make the field and Indiana 73.5¢ · College football undefeated odds, where Indiana at 15.5¢ is the highest-priced Big Ten team · Heisman Trophy odds 2026, where Ohio State's Julian Sayin sits at 6.5¢ behind CJ Carr at 12.5¢. Prices fetched August 9, 2026.

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Every Seat's Number

Team	Kalshi	Blend	Fable	Opus	Sonnet	ChatGPT	GLM	Kimi	DeepSeek
Ohio State	30.5¢	21.4%	21.0	22.0	19.9	19.9	24.0	21.9	21.0
Indiana	23.5¢	19.2%	16.0	19.0	22.8	17.9	20.0	20.9	18.0
Oregon	25.5¢	19.0%	18.0	19.0	15.9	18.9	21.0	20.9	19.0
Penn State	4.5¢	7.6%	7.0	7.0	7.0	9.0	7.0	7.0	9.0
USC	6.5¢	7.0%	8.0	7.0	7.0	7.0	6.0	8.0	6.0
Michigan	5.5¢	6.7%	7.0	7.0	7.0	7.0	5.0	7.0	7.0
Washington	2.5¢	4.1%	5.0	4.5	4.0	5.0	3.0	3.0	4.5
Iowa	1.5¢	3.8%	5.0	4.0	4.0	5.0	3.0	2.5	3.5
Illinois	<1¢	2.5%	3.0	2.5	3.8	2.0	2.0	2.0	2.5
Nebraska	<1¢	1.9%	2.5	2.0	1.8	1.5	2.0	1.5	2.0
Minnesota	<1¢	1.8%	2.0	1.5	2.8	2.0	1.5	1.5	1.5
Northwestern	<1¢	1.1%	1.5	1.0	1.5	1.5	1.0	1.0	0.5
UCLA	<1¢	1.0%	1.0	1.0	0.9	0.8	1.0	1.0	1.5
Wisconsin	<1¢	1.0%	1.0	0.7	0.5	1.0	1.0	0.6	2.0
Rutgers	<1¢	0.6%	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	1.0	0.5	0.5
Michigan State	<1¢	0.6%	0.7	0.9	0.3	0.7	0.5	0.3	0.5
Maryland	<1¢	0.4%	0.5	0.3	0.4	0.2	0.5	0.4	0.5
Purdue	<1¢	0.3%	0.3	0.1	0.2	0.1	0.5	0.2	0.5

Every seat on this panel is graded against real market settlements — records to date: Claude Fable 82% on 450 graded calls · Claude Opus 84% on 514 graded calls · Claude Sonnet 82% on 498 graded calls · GPT 83% on 3,225 graded calls · GLM 81% on 2,307 graded calls · Kimi 83% on 2,285 graded calls · DeepSeek 80% on 2,332 graded calls. Recomputed daily; the full scoreboard is public.

Model estimates generated August 9, 2026, price-blind. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial or trading advice. Models are frequently wrong; the market price reflects real traders' money. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange; 18+, availability varies by state.

Every number in this piece gets graded in public once the market settles, on the full graded scoreboard. Seven of the panel's eight seats returned a board on this run; the eighth was unavailable and its column is absent rather than guessed. Each seat priced all 18 teams in one pass, so no team's number was set without the rest of the conference in view, then read the other six boards anonymously and was invited to revise. Every figure above is the post-revision number. Seat columns are shown rounded to one decimal place, while each blend is the mean of the seven unrounded distributions, so a hand-averaged column can land a tenth away from the printed blend.

How To Read This Board: Two Stages, Not One

Every seat priced this the same way, and it explains most of the gap to the market. Winning the Big Ten is two separate problems, not one.

• Stage One: Get To Indianapolis. The conference has 18 members and no divisions, and 2026 is its third season in that format. Each team plays nine conference games out of a possible 17 opponents, and the top two in the standings go. Nine games is a short sample for sorting 18 teams, and which nine you get is not up to you.
• Stage Two: Win One Football Game. Two good teams, a neutral field, sixty minutes. Across the seats' written rationales, that conditional step lands between 45% and 55% for every contender.

That second stage is what caps the whole board. A team the models like at 45% to reach the game still only lands near 22% to win it, which is why nobody on this panel put any team above the mid-20s in August.

The championship game ledger says exactly the same thing. Fifteen editions since 2011 have produced seven different champions. Michigan won three straight from 2021 to 2023 and has not appeared in either edition since. The last two winners, Oregon in 2024 and Indiana in 2025, had never won this game before, and Indiana had never played in it. Seven of the conference's current 18 members, including USC and Washington, have never appeared in it at all.

And last December is the cleanest illustration available. Ohio State arrived in Indianapolis 12-0, having beaten Michigan 27-9 the week before, and lost 13-10.

Ohio State: The Poll's No. 1 With The League's Hardest Draw

Ohio State is the market's favorite at 30.5 cents and the No. 1 team in the AFCA Coaches Poll, the only preseason poll released so far. The panel still made the Buckeyes its top pick, but at 21.4%, against a de-vigged market price of 29.0%. That 7.6-point gap is the largest single disagreement on the board.

The case for Ohio State is not in dispute. They went 9-1 in the Big Ten last season, the championship game included, and 12-2 overall, scoring 34.9 points a game and allowing 8.2, the lowest points-allowed average in the conference. Ryan Day is 55-5 in Big Ten play, a .917 winning percentage, entering his eighth season at the school.

What the models kept returning to is the schedule. Eight Big Ten teams are ranked in the Coaches Poll, and Ohio State plays five of them, including both Oregon and Indiana. Add up the 2025 Big Ten win totals of each team's nine 2026 conference opponents and Ohio State's slate is the hardest in the league at 52, ahead of Northwestern at 49 and Michigan and Nebraska at 47.

"The Buckeyes' nine games include at Indiana, at USC, at Iowa, vs Oregon and vs Michigan — every other plausible contender, three of them on the road, plus a non-conference trip to Texas. No other contender draws all five." — Claude Opus

[Editor's note: the five games and the three road trips are right, but "every other plausible contender" overstates it. Ohio State misses Penn State and Washington, both ranked, and this article treats Penn State as a live contender.]

That is checkable against the schedule. Ohio State's four Big Ten road games are Iowa, Indiana, USC and Nebraska; it hosts Oregon and Michigan. The only ranked Big Ten teams it misses are Penn State and Washington. On the panel's math, a team can be the best in the conference and still sit near a one-in-five shot to win its own title game, because the standings do not grade on difficulty.

Indiana And Oregon: The Champion And The Contender Who Never Meet

Indiana is the defending champion in the most emphatic way available. The Hoosiers went 10-0 in the Big Ten including the championship game, and 16-0 overall in 2025, scoring 41.9 points a game and allowing 10.8 across the regular season and the title game, and they beat Ohio State 13-10 in Indianapolis. Curt Cignetti is 27-2 at the school and 17-1 in Big Ten play. The market has them third at 23.5 cents. The panel has them second at 19.2%, two-tenths of a point clear of Oregon.

The reason is the draw. Indiana misses Oregon, Penn State and Iowa entirely, plays four ranked conference opponents, and hosts Ohio State rather than visiting.

"Indiana (18%) rises on a very favorable schedule: they miss Oregon, Iowa, and Penn State entirely, host Ohio State, and return Curt Cignetti (17-1 Big Ten)." — DeepSeek V4

Oregon is the mirror image and the market's second choice at 25.5 cents against a 19.0% panel number. The Ducks went 8-1 in the league and 13-2 overall, with their only conference loss to Indiana, and Dan Lanning is 17-1 in Big Ten play, a record identical to Cignetti's. Oregon also misses Indiana, which is a real seeding gift, but it has to win at Ohio State and at USC to use it, and it hosts both Michigan and Washington.

The two schedules produce the same shape from opposite directions, which is why the panel ended up with Indiana and Oregon inside two-tenths of a point of each other while the market separates them by two cents.

Penn State: The 3-6 Team With The Second-Softest Draw In The League

The biggest gap the panel opens in any team's favor belongs to Penn State, and all seven seats came in above the market. Kalshi has the Nittany Lions at 4.5 cents, 4.3% de-vigged. The panel has them at 7.6%, with a range of 7.0 to 9.0 — not one seat below 7.

Penn State went 3-6 in the Big Ten last season and fired James Franklin in October after 12 years and a 104-45 record. Matt Campbell arrives from Iowa State with a 107-70 career mark and no Big Ten games to his name. On the resume alone the market's price looks reasonable.

The schedule is what changes it. Penn State's nine conference games are Wisconsin, at Northwestern, USC, at Michigan, Purdue, at Washington, Minnesota, Rutgers and at Maryland. It misses Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana, the three best teams in the conference last season and the three most expensive contracts on this board, plus Iowa. It plays three ranked Big Ten opponents, tied with Iowa for the fewest of any contender. On the same opponent-strength measure that puts Ohio State's slate hardest at 52, Penn State's is 33, the second-softest of the 18.

That fact moved more seats in the revision round than anything else on the card, and the models were careful about how far to take it:

"PSU's 2026 slate misses Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon simultaneously, the three best 2025 teams, which is a real stage-(a) seeding gift even for a 3-6 team with a first-year coach. I did not go as far as B's 14%: the soft draw still includes USC and a trip to Michigan." — Kimi

The honest version of this read is narrow. Nobody on the panel thinks Penn State is the fourth-best team in the Big Ten. They think a nine-game schedule that skips all three of the best teams is worth more probability than a 4.5-cent contract implies, because top-two is a seeding problem and seeding is exactly what a soft draw buys.

Where The Panel Changed Its Mind

After the first round, each seat read the other six boards anonymously, with model names stripped, and could revise or hold. Every seat moved at least a little, and almost every move came from the same place: the schedule lattice.

The biggest single revision came from a seat that had made a factual error and found it:

"I revised because multiple peers surfaced a factual error in my Round-1 reasoning: I claimed Ohio State 'hosts both Indiana and Oregon,' but the schedule card clearly shows Ohio State is AT Indiana and AT USC, AT Iowa, AT Nebraska, AT Michigan — five road conference games including four against quality opponents." — GLM

[Editor's note: GLM's corrected list of Ohio State's road games also overstates the count. The Buckeyes' Big Ten road games are Iowa, Indiana, USC and Nebraska: four, not five. They host Michigan. The direction of the correction is right and the seat cut Ohio State from 33% to 24% on it.]

The most useful move, though, came from the seat that declined to follow the two biggest outliers, which is the harder thing to do on a panel:

"Held against the two biggest outliers because both contain card errors: the 33% Ohio State case says OSU hosts Indiana (card: at Indiana), and the 25% Indiana case says Indiana misses USC." — Claude Fable

Fable was right on both counts. Ohio State visits Bloomington, and Indiana hosts USC. A seat that declines to follow the crowd because it checked the crowd's arithmetic is worth more than a seat that converges.

One seat moved toward the poll rather than away from it, and said plainly what it was buying:

"Partial deference to the Coaches Poll's #1-vs-#6 gap as a proxy for roster info I don't have, nudging Ohio State up and Indiana down slightly." — Claude Sonnet

And one moved against the emerging consensus, cutting Penn State while everyone else was raising it:

"I also found persuasive the consensus among peers that Penn State's 3-6 2025 record and first-year coach limit their ability to exploit an easy schedule, so I lowered them from 14% to 9%." — DeepSeek V4

Dark Horses The Panel Won't Dismiss

Below the top six, the models are consistently more generous than the market, and four names carry numbers the crowd does not.

• Iowa, Market 1.5¢, Panel 3.8%. The largest proportional gap among the priced contracts: roughly 2.7 times the de-vigged price, and every seat came in above it. Iowa went 6-3 in the Big Ten and 9-4 overall, allowing 15.2 points a game. Kirk Ferentz is in his 28th season with a 134-91 Big Ten record. Like Penn State, Iowa draws only three ranked conference opponents and misses Oregon, Indiana, USC and Penn State.

• Illinois, Under 1¢, Panel 2.5%. Five times the de-vigged price, and the highest number any seat gave a sub-cent contract was Sonnet's 3.8%. Illinois went 5-4 in the league and 9-4 overall under Bret Bielema, who is 23-22 in Big Ten play at the school. The contract has traded 3,626 times, against 63,896 on UCLA.

• Minnesota And Nebraska, Both Under 1¢, 1.8% And 1.9%. Minnesota went 5-4 in conference play, the same as Illinois and Washington, and P.J. Fleck is in year 10. Nebraska went 4-5 under Matt Rhule. Neither is a contender in any seat's telling, but both sit in the same thin 0/1 quote band as eight other teams.

One caveat belongs on this whole tier, and the models raised it themselves. The panel was given each team's 2025 results, its coaching record, its full 2026 schedule and the preseason poll, and no injury, depth-chart or transfer information at all, because none of it can be verified this far out. Every seat named quarterback uncertainty as its largest unknown. Where a model rates a team above the market down here, it is rating last season's team and this season's schedule, and it said so.

What Would Change The Panel's Mind

Four things between now and December would move these numbers, and all four have dates.

• The AP Top 25 Preseason Poll, Monday, August 17. The Coaches Poll is currently the only released preseason ranking, and it is the single largest non-schedule input on the card. A materially different AP order, particularly one that separates Ohio State from Indiana by more or less than the coaches did, would pull the top three apart or push them further together.

• Named Starting Quarterbacks, Through Late August. Every seat flagged this as its biggest gap. Rosters list quarterbacks; nobody has named a starter. A settled quarterback room at Ohio State, Oregon or Indiana removes one of the panel's stated unknowns; a camp injury to one pushes that team down and lifts everything below it.

• Ohio State At Indiana, October 17. The rematch of last year's title game, and the single most consequential regular-season game on this board. Ohio State's number is capped almost entirely by its road slate; winning in Bloomington removes most of that discount. An Indiana win does the reverse and leaves the Hoosiers holding the head-to-head result over the team the market likes best.

• Penn State's First Six Games, Before The Michigan Trip On October 17. The Penn State case is a bet that a soft draw converts. Marshall, at Temple, Buffalo, Wisconsin, at Northwestern and USC come before Ann Arbor. If Campbell's team arrives there unbeaten, the panel's 7.6% looks low. If it stumbles against Wisconsin or Northwestern, the second-softest schedule in the league stops mattering and that probability goes back to the top three.

Settlement Timeline

What	When
AP Top 25 Preseason Poll Released	August 17, 2026
First Big Ten Game Of The Season	Saturday, August 29, 2026
Ohio State At Indiana	Saturday, October 17, 2026
Big Ten Championship Game And Settlement	Saturday, December 5, 2026, Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis

Kalshi's contracts close early once a winner is declared; the listed January 3, 2027 close date is a placeholder, not the real one. This board gets re-scored whenever the story moves, and the prices above are as of August 9, 2026.

Big Ten Championship Game FAQ

When and where is the 2026 Big Ten Championship Game?

Saturday, December 5, 2026, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The stadium has hosted every edition since the game began in 2011 and is contracted through 2028. That night is also when these Kalshi contracts settle.

How do teams qualify for the Big Ten Championship Game?

The Big Ten has 18 members and no divisions. Every team plays a nine-game conference schedule, and the top two in the conference standings meet in Indianapolis. There is no divisional path and no rematch protection.

Who won the 2025 Big Ten Championship Game?

Indiana, 13-10 over Ohio State. The Buckeyes walked in 12-0 and lost. Indiana finished the season 16-0. It was the first time Indiana had appeared in this game since it began in 2011.

The Bottom Line

The market and the panel agree on who the best teams in the Big Ten are. They disagree about how much that is worth in a conference that decides its title with a nine-game seeding race and one neutral-site game.

Kalshi charges 75.7 de-vigged cents for Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana. Seven models that never saw a price charge 59.6. The sixteen points in between are spread across a Penn State team that misses all three favorites, an Iowa team that misses four ranked opponents, and a middle class of 5-4 and 6-3 programs the market has left at a penny or two. None of those teams is likely to win the Big Ten. Collectively, the panel thinks they are a good deal more likely to than the board says.

Fifteen editions of this game have produced seven champions, the last two of them first-time winners, and last December an unbeaten Ohio State team lost it 13-10. That is the history the models kept citing, and it is the reason none of them would put any team above the mid-20s in August.

To be explicit: everything above is a set of model estimates and market prices, not predictions of fact and not financial or trading advice. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange, participation is 18+, and availability varies by state.