The Louisville Kings and the St. Louis Battlehawks will meet in a UFL semifinal at The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis, Missouri, with the winner earning a trip to the United Bowl, the league announced on June 5, 2026.
Both clubs finished the regular season 6-4; Louisville enters as the No. 3 seed after an unlikely run in its inaugural campaign under coach Chris Redman. The Kings began 0-3, traded starting quarterback Jason Bean, and handed the offense to Chandler Rogers, who sparked a turnaround that included a Week Five upset of the Dallas Renegades. Louisville closed 6-1 overall and carries a four-game winning streak into the playoff weekend, averaging more than 35 points per game during that stretch and twice beating the defending champion DC Defenders.
St. Louis opened 5-2 but stumbled late, losing two of its final three games while searching for stability at quarterback. The Battlehawks cycled from Brandon Silvers to Harrison Frost and then to Luis Perez, who was acquired from Dallas after Week Four and made his first start in Week Seven. The Derby Classic Showdown in late April already produced a tense note for Louisville: the Battlehawks beat the Kings 16-3 in Louisville, the only team to hand Louisville a loss since Week Three.
Stat lines sharpen the choice facing both teams. WAVE reported that Louisville has averaged 38 points per game offensively since Week Six and 30 points per game during its four-game winning streak; over that same span the Kings have surrendered 23 points per game. WAVE noted St. Louis has averaged 21 points per game since Week Six and allowed 19 points per game over its last four contests. Louisville also finished fourth in the UFL with 102 rushing yards per game, with Ian Wheeler (370 yards) and James Robinson (300 yards) among the league’s top rushers.
Turnovers and pressure are Louisville’s calling cards. The Kings forced a league-leading 17 takeaways, including 13 interceptions, with Corey Mayfield Jr. grabbing four picks. Edge rusher Cam Gill set a UFL single-season sack record with ten sacks. Those figures matter because St. Louis has shown splintered offensive form in its late-season slide and faces questions about whether its rotated quarterbacks can sustain drives against a disruptive Louisville front.
Practical details matter for the matchup: the semifinal will be played on St. Louis’s home field at The Dome at America’s Center, with the winner advancing to the United Bowl. Louisville rested several key players in the regular-season finale while still beating Columbus, a move that preserved momentum but left the Kings short on season-long playoff experience. St. Louis, meanwhile, dropped two of its final four games against teams that failed to reach the postseason — a vulnerability Louisville will try to exploit.
What to watch when kickoff arrives is straightforward. Can Louisville turn takeaways into early points and lean on a 102-yard rushing attack to control tempo? Will St. Louis’s quarterback rotation — now featuring Luis Perez — settle quickly enough to turn that 16-3 win in late April into a repeat performance at home? Fans tracking UFL scores will be watching matchups in the trenches: Gill versus the Battlehawks’ left side and the Kings’ secondary against a Battlehawks offense that has been streaky since Week Six.
The single most consequential unanswered question heading into the semifinal is whether Louisville’s late-season surge can erase the memory of that Derby Classic loss and succeed on the road against a Battlehawks club that already beat them. The stakes are simple and final: win in St. Louis and play for the United Bowl; lose and the season ends. How those two short statements resolve will decide both teams’ 2026 legacies.
