Kerry and Donegal Meet in All Ireland Draw Round 1

Kerry will play Donegal and Dublin will meet Louth again in the all ireland draw for the first round of the All-Ireland football championship. The eight opening games will be spread across the last two weekends of May, with the split determined by province.

Munster and Connacht counties will play on May 23rd and 24th, while Ulster and Leinster counties will play on May 30th and 31st. The All-Ireland final is set for Sunday, July 26th.

Tom Ryan and Brian Carroll

GAA ard stiúrthóir Tom Ryan and Central Competitions Control Committee chairperson Brian Carroll helped with the draw process. The route after Round 1 is already mapped out: the eight winners move to Round 2A and the eight losers go to Round 2B.

In both of those rounds, the first team drawn gets home advantage. Round 2A will pit the eight first-round winners against each other, while repeats of the provincial final pairings will be avoided. Round 2B follows the same rule for the eight first-round losers.

Round 2A and Round 2B

The structure gives the four Round 2A winners a direct path to the quarter-finals, where they will meet the four winners from Round 3. The four losing teams from Round 2A drop into Round 3 and are drawn against the four winning teams from Round 2B.

That means the first-round draw is doing more than setting pairings for one weekend. It also fixes which counties get a second chance through Round 2B and which winners can move straight into the quarter-finals if they keep winning.

Provincial Finals Ahead

The draw comes while the Munster and Connacht finals are being played this weekend, and before the Ulster and Leinster deciders on May 17th. Those results shape the field that enters the first round, but the bracket now gives every county a clear route through the championship.