The NIU wrestling team will join the Pac-12 Conference beginning in the 2026-2027 season, the school announced on Wednesday.

The move leaves only the Huskies’ gymnastics program without an announced conference after the school’s exit from the Mid-American Conference at the end of the 2025-2026 school year. The football program will join the Mountain West next year in a move revealed in January. In March, the school joined the Horizon League as the home for all Huskies sports except football, wrestling, and gymnastics.

All new conferences become official on July 1, 2026.

“We continue to find our place in this new landscape and are pleased to have our wrestling program join the Pac-12 Conference,” NIU athletic director Sean Fraizer said. “It has been a thorough process to ensure that we found the right fit for our program and we believe we have found that with the Pac-12. I look forward to a bright future for Huskie wrestling.”

The Pac-12 is currently suing the Mountain West over $55 million in poaching fees. A motion to dismiss the suit by the Mountain West was denied Tuesday in federal court.

The university did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on whether the lawsuit influenced the decision.

NIU joins Oregon State, Cal Poly, Cal State Bakersfield, and Little Rock as wrestling members of the Pac-12. As an NCAA sport with an automatic qualifier, the Pac-12 will need to add at least one more wrestling program to meet the minimum requirement of six members for the sport in order to retain NCAA automatic qualification for its annual league champion.

“We are thrilled to be joining such a competitive conference filled with prestigious wrestlers, coaches and administrators committed to the sport,” NIU head coach Ryan Ludwig said. “This will provide outstanding opportunities for our student-athletes to accomplish their goals, while expanding the national footprint of the NIU Wrestling program.”

The NIU wrestling program posted a 7-3 dual record last year and had a pair of NCAA Championship qualifiers, Blake West and Landen Johnson, extending its streak of sending at least one student-athlete to the NCAA Championships to 54 straight years.

The Pac-12 and Mountain West failed to reach an agreement by a July deadline for mediation, and the Pac-12 requested the hearing on a pending motion to dismiss.

The exit clause called for payments to the Mountain West of $10 million for the first team that left, with the amount growing by $500,000 for every additional team. That was on top of the $17 million plus exit fees that schools were responsible for as part of a different agreement.

Colorado State, Utah State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Boise State are set to leave the Mountain West and join the Pac-12 starting in 2026. The conference added Texas State in June to reach the eight-team minimum to be eligible for an automatic bid for its champion in the College Football Playoff.

Oregon State and Washington State are the only remaining Pac-12 members following an exodus last year that threatened the conference’s future. The two schools reached a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West so they could piece together a football schedule last season.

The Mountain West has added UTEP, Hawaii and NIU for football starting in 2026.

Boise State, Colorado State and Utah State also filed an updated lawsuit against the Mountain West last month, alleging it improperly withheld millions of dollars and misled them about a plan to accelerate Grand Canyon’s membership.

Also on Tuesday, On3Sports’ Brett McMurphy reported that NIU will receive about $34 million in six seasons as a football-only member in the Mountain West, just shy of $6 million per year. The MW will also pay a $1.5 million signing bonus and up to $2.5 million of NIU’s exit fee to the MAC.