Homecoming

Plan Homecoming

Live planning details from HBCU GameTrip. Event information updates without rewriting the guide.

DateOctober 17, 2026

VenueGreene Stadium

SchoolHoward University

DestinationDC

Plan GameTripOfficial TicketsExplore SchoolExplore Destination

Make It a Trip

Search travel to DC

StaysDC

Stays Flights

Destination

Dates

–

Travelers

1 guest2 guests3 guests4 guests5 guests6 guests7 guests8 guests9 guests10 guests1 room2 rooms3 rooms4 rooms5 rooms6 rooms

From

To

Dates

–

Travelers

1 traveler2 travelers3 travelers4 travelers5 travelers6 travelers7 travelers8 travelers9 travelersEconomyPremium economyBusinessFirst

Search

Howard Homecoming 2026: The Alumni Guide to Coming Back to DC

Howard Homecoming 2026: The Alumni Guide to Coming Back to DC

You do not need a tourist’s introduction to DC. You went to Howard. You already know what it feels like to move between the Hilltop, Georgia Avenue, U Street, Shaw and the rest of the city with somewhere to be and somebody to meet.

Homecoming is different. It brings you back to a campus you know, a city you remember and people you may not have seen since the last time everybody decided to come home at once. Some of your DC is still here. Some of it is gone. A lot of it has changed.

This guide is built for that return. Use it to see the official Howard Homecoming schedule, find a hotel that makes sense for the weekend, figure out where alumni are eating and going out now, and keep up with the events happening around Homecoming beyond the university calendar.

Howard Homecoming 2026 Schedule

You probably already know which parts of Homecoming matter most to you. Start with Howard’s official schedule and build the rest of the weekend around the events you actually want to attend. This schedule updates from Howard’s official Homecoming calendar as events are added or changed.

Coming Back to the Hilltop

Before the dinners, parties and alumni events take over the weekend, give yourself time to simply be back at Howard.

Walk the Yard without rushing somewhere else. Pass the buildings that were part of your daily routine. See what looks familiar and what does not. Homecoming has a way of collapsing time: you can be standing in a place you knew twenty years ago while talking to someone you have not seen in almost as long.

Not every worthwhile Homecoming moment is on the schedule. Leave some room for the people you run into and the conversations that happen because everybody came back at the same time.

Where to Stay This Time

You may have lived in DC before, but Homecoming changes the way you use the city. The question is not which hotel is closest to the monuments. It is where you want to be when the campus events end and the rest of the weekend starts.

If your group plans to move between Howard, alumni gatherings, dinner and nightlife, choose a hotel that makes those movements easy. If several classmates are coming back together, staying in the same property can turn the hotel lobby, bar or breakfast table into part of the reunion.

What Changed Since You Left

Coming back to DC can be disorienting in the best and worst ways. The corner you remember may look completely different. The place everybody used to meet may be gone. A neighborhood you barely spent time in as a student may now be where you want to spend Friday night.

Do not spend the whole weekend trying to recreate your student years. Revisit what still matters, then make room for the DC that exists now.

Dinner With the Crew

Homecoming dinner is rarely just dinner. It is the table where people catch up on careers, families, old stories and everything that happened between graduations. For this section, HBCU GameTrip prioritizes restaurants that editors have marked for group dinners, alumni gatherings and Homecoming use. Exact restaurants can also be selected for this guide instead of relying on an automatic list.

Before the Game

Saturday goes better when nobody is trying to make a last-minute plan in a group text. Decide where you are meeting, how you are getting to campus and when you want to be near Greene Stadium before game day starts moving faster than expected.

If you want something to eat before heading in, these recommendations prioritize places tagged for quick access, pregame dining and alumni relevance rather than simply showing three random restaurants in DC.

Game Day at Howard

Give yourself enough time to actually experience campus before kickoff. Homecoming game day is not only the game. It is seeing people on the way in, stopping longer than you expected, finding out somebody else is back in town and realizing your carefully planned Saturday is already changing.

Check Howard’s current parking, security and transportation guidance before leaving the hotel. Even if you remember exactly how you used to get around campus, Homecoming weekend is not a normal Saturday in DC.

After the Game

The final whistle is usually the transition, not the end of the night.

You already know U Street exists. The more useful question is what is worth your time now. This section prioritizes current nightlife and after-game options that fit an alumni weekend, with Editor’s Picks and locally relevant places ranked ahead of generic results.

More Happening During Homecoming

Howard’s official calendar is only part of Homecoming. Alumni groups, promoters, organizations and venues add brunches, reunions, parties, concerts, networking events and other experiences around the weekend.

The events below are kept separate from Howard’s official schedule so you can tell the difference between university programming and everything else happening around Homecoming.

Sunday Brunch Before Everybody Heads Home

Sunday is often where the weekend slows down enough for one more real conversation. If your group has not already disappeared to airports and highways, brunch can be the last Homecoming gathering before everybody starts saying, “We are not waiting this long again.”

These recommendations prioritize places specifically tagged for brunch and alumni gatherings.

Bringing Someone Who Did Not Go to Howard?

If your spouse, partner, family member or friend did not attend Howard, they are seeing two things at once: your university and the city that surrounded your Howard years.

Show them the places that matter to you, but do not make them spend the entire weekend listening to stories about places that no longer exist. Let them experience the DC of today too. That may mean a museum, a neighborhood, a restaurant or something you never got around to doing when you actually lived here.

Experience DC Now

You have probably done the standard DC things before. This section is for what is worth adding to the weekend now: culture, experiences and places that can make the trip feel like more than a reunion schedule.

Make Homecoming a Real Trip

You are already coming back. Give yourself enough time to enjoy being back.

Stay another night if you can. Have dinner with people you usually only see online. Walk somewhere you have not been since you were a student. Go back to one place that still matters and try one place that did not exist when you graduated.

Howard is the reason everybody comes back. The weekend becomes memorable because of everything that happens around that return.

Complete Your Howard Homecoming GameTrip

Use HBCU GameTrip to keep building the weekend with Howard’s current Homecoming schedule, hotel options, curated places and events happening across DC.

Come back to Howard. See what changed. Find your people. Make it a trip.