Your Guide To Roughriders Training Camp In Saskatoon And The 2026 Season

Saskatchewan Roughriders fans have been waiting since November for football to come back.

The wait is over.

The Riders headed to Saskatoon for training camp and a preseason game this month, and Rider Nation finally gets a chance to see this team in person again.

This article is about what to expect with camp opening in Saskatoon, what’s changed since the Grey Cup, and how the new Riders All Access Report keeps fans locked in through every practice, every roster move, and every game of the 2026 season.

The roster has shifted since November. New names have arrived. Familiar ones have moved on. By the time pads start cracking at Griffiths Stadium, the depth chart most fans remember is not exactly the one taking the field. 

Players spend the offseason preparing for what comes next, and serious fans do the work too. 

That means knowing what happened since the Grey Cup, knowing what to watch during training camp, and knowing where to follow every moment of it through the 2026 season.

What’s Happened Since the Grey Cup

The trophy went home, the confetti got swept up, and somewhere between November and May, the front office spent the offseason figuring out which pieces of a championship roster they could keep and which ones they would have to replace.

Trevor Harris is back as the defending Grey Cup MVP. The offensive line is largely intact. A.J. Ouellette returns at running back. But Saskatchewan went into free agency with a CFL-high 44 pending free agents and managed to retain about half of them. Some key contributors moved on. Some new faces have arrived. The defensive line in particular has new combinations to sort out.

The answers to who fills which roles are what coaches will spend training camp working out.

Most fans have been tracking these moves in fragments. A signing here, a release there, a paragraph buried in a transaction blurb. But training camp in Saskatoon is where it all becomes real. The depth chart stops being a guess. The competition plays out in front of cameras. The 2026 Roughriders show up and start becoming a football team.

If you have been half-watching since the parade, this is the moment to lock in.

What to Expect at Roughriders Training Camp in Saskatoon

Rookie Camp began on May 7 at Griffiths Stadium in Nutrien Park, on the University of Saskatchewan campus. 

For three days, the coaching staff took their first real look at the players fighting hardest to make this roster.

The full roster reported May 11 for the start of main camp. 

Veterans and rookies are on the same field, competing for the same spots, and the coaches are watching everything.

The open practice window is when fans get their closest look at this team all year. 

You can see who is taking first-team reps. You can hear coaches working through coverages. You can watch the rookies who have a real shot to make the roster get tested in live drills against guys who have already done it. 

The vibe is closer to a community gathering than a pro football tryout, so bring the kids, pack a folding chair, and don't forget the sunscreen.

The team trains in Saskatoon for two weeks before the preseason game on May 23, then heads back to Regina on May 25 ahead of the regular season.

The Preseason Game Is the First Real Test

Speaking of the preseason game, everything coaches have been evaluating in shorts and helmets gets its first live answer on Saturday, May 23, when the Roughriders host the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in Saskatoon.

For the players on the roster bubble, this is more than a glorified practice. It's the most important day of their year. 

Coaches dress two-deep at most positions, younger players who have been turning heads in camp finally get a chance to do it against another team, and decisions get made on this game tape that follow players for the rest of the season.

For fans in Saskatoon, this is the only chance to see the Roughriders play a real game in your city. 

The atmosphere is different from a regular season home game in Regina. Smaller, looser, closer to the field. You can hear the hits. You can see which receivers are running crisp routes and which defensive backs have their coverage dialed in.

The roster that lines up on May 23 is not the one that will start Week 1, and that’s the whole point. 

You’re watching a team get built in front of you, and the players who perform that night are the ones who get to keep playing.

What the Riders All Access Report Delivers

Watching this year’s team get built happens on the field in Saskatoon. 

But following along doesn’t mean you have to be there in person.

The Riders All Access Report does the work and sends you the result. Daily emails through the entire 2026 season. 

Get every roster move, every practice report, every storyline that matters.

Exclusive Player Access

The All Access Report goes places the standard wire reports don’t. 

Conversations with players you won’t hear quoted on TSN or CFL.ca, storylines from the locker room and the sideline that get filtered out of the headlines, and the context behind the moves the team is making rather than just the announcement of the move itself.

There is a real difference between knowing the Roughriders signed a receiver and knowing what the coaching staff likes about him. 

The All Access Report is where that second level of understanding comes from.

Daily Coverage From Camp Through the Season

The cadence is what makes the report work. 

Throughout the season, something lands in your inbox every day. 

Practice reports during camp. Position battle updates. Preseason game build-up and post-game analysis. In-season previews ahead of every game. Postgame breakdowns the morning after. Storylines as they develop, not three days late.

Following a CFL season means tracking a dozen different sources across a long week, and things fall through the cracks. 

With daily coverage, The Riders All Access Report ensures you never miss a snap.

CFL Power Rankings, Trivia, and the League-Wide View

And that means more than just Riders coverage. After all, the Roughriders don’t play in a vacuum, and the All Access Report doesn’t cover them like they do. 

Every game in Regina is shaped by what happened the week before in Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Hamilton, and understanding where the Riders sit in the league pecking order is part of understanding what the season means as it unfolds. 

Weekly power rankings track that picture. Trivia keeps the daily read from feeling like homework. And because the All Access Report runs through the 3DownNation pipeline, the league-wide reporting behind it is the same coverage that drives Canada's biggest CFL website.

Sideline Passes, Tickets, and Riders Experiences

Subscribers get first crack at experiences the rest of Rider Nation does not have access to. Tickets to games. Sideline passes for big home matchups. Other Riders experiences that come up across the season. Reading the All Access Report is the qualifier for getting in on them.

This is the closest you can get to the team without putting on a credential.

How Harvard Media Covers Every Moment of The Riders Season

The Riders All Access Report is one piece of Harvard Media's Roughriders coverage, and the rest of it is built to reach Rider Nation wherever they are.

The Riders Broadcast Network and 620 CKRM

Game day on the radio is a Saskatchewan tradition. 

The Riders Broadcast Network and 620 CKRM bring every game to fans across the province and beyond, the same way they have for generations. Listeners tune in from combines and kitchens, from Regina apartments and Estevan rinks, from highway drives and back decks.

The voices behind coverage are former CFL players and full-time CFL reporters whose entire careers have been built inside this league.

Dave Thomas, the Voice of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, calls play-by-play with the kind of authority that comes from decades of broadcast experience.

Luc Mullinder enters his tenth season as the Roughriders' lead analyst, breaking down what just happened on the field with the perspective of someone who lined up in those same trenches and actually won a Grey Cup. 

Wes Cates, the former Roughriders running back, brings game-day analysis grounded in what it actually feels like to read a defence when the play clock is running.

After the final whistle, Cates joins Rider Broadcast Network Host Teagan Witko and 3DownNation CFL Insider Justin Dunk to break down the game and welcome calls from across Rider Nation on the Radio Roundtable call-in show.

If you can’t get to the game, this is the next best thing.

SportsCage.com

Between games, SportsCage.com is where Roughriders coverage lives online. 

Practice reports during camp and through the season. Player news as it breaks. Depth chart analysis when roster moves require it. Build-up in the days before kickoff and takeaways in the hours after the final whistle.

The discussions and debates continue on SportsCage.com and the SportsCage Radio Show, live every weekday on 620 CKRM at 3 p.m. - 6 p.m. and streamed on demand on the SportsCage site.

Whether you are checking in once a week or following every snap, SportsCage.com is your home base.

Are You Ready, Rider Nation?

The roster prepared all offseason for the moment camp opens. 

Their job is to come back even better than they were in November.

Rider Nation has a job, too.

Being a serious fan of this team is a commitment. It's knowing the depth chart, knowing the rookie who could surprise people, knowing what to watch for when Trevor Harris drops back on May 23. 

The fans in the know are the ones who get the most out of every gameday from June through November.

The Riders All Access Report is how you do that job without it feeling like work. From the first practice in Saskatoon through the final game of 2026, every morning, in your inbox.

Subscribe to the Riders All Access Report at SportsCage.com.