The Montreal Alouettes face the Edmonton Elks in the 113th Grey Cup on Sunday, November 15, at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, with kickoff at 6 p.m. ET. Montreal arrive as East champions at 14-4 with the league’s best record, Edmonton as West champions at 13-5 after a worst to first turnaround, meeting for the Grey Cup for a record twelfth time, as the CFL playoff guide’s Grey Cup page lays out.
Edmonton have won eight of the first eleven Grey Cup meetings between these two clubs, a history that stretches across generations of Canadian football. Montreal are in the final for the second straight year and the third time since 2023, still carrying last November’s 25-17 loss to Saskatchewan in Winnipeg. Edmonton play for their fifteenth Grey Cup and their first since 2015, having snapped a six year playoff drought and won the West for the first time in eleven years. One side is chasing redemption. The other is completing a rebuild in a single season.
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Alexander Leads A Montreal Offence Built To Score
Montreal’s case starts with the league’s outstanding player. Davis Alexander threw for 5,257 yards with 35 touchdowns against only four interceptions this season, running an offence that averaged 34.7 points and a league best 420.9 yards per game. The Alouettes went 9-0 at home, earned the East bye, and beat Winnipeg 33-23 in the East Final to get here. Tyson Philpot, the league’s Most Outstanding Canadian, gives Alexander a national ratio breaking weapon in the receiving corps, and head coach Jason Maas has built the most complete attack in the three down game.
The Alouettes also know exactly what losing this game feels like, because they lived it twelve months ago. That experience cuts into Sunday in a useful way: no part of Grey Cup week, from the media load to the anthem to the first quarter nerves, is new to this group. Montreal are favourites on merit, on record, and on the strength of a season in which they were the best team in the league from June to November.
Edmonton’s Turnaround Meets Its Final Test
Edmonton counter with the league’s most remarkable story. A team that missed the playoffs for six straight years won the West, took their division final 28-16 over BC, and arrive in Calgary with Cody Fajardo at quarterback, a veteran who has won this game before in his career and who gives the Elks calm in the exact moments Grey Cups are decided. Both starting quarterbacks on Sunday are undrafted Americans who took the long road to this stage, and both defences finished the season among the league’s best.
The season series offers no shortcut to a prediction. Edmonton won the first meeting 32-29 in Week 3, and Montreal answered with a 48-30 win in Week 10, two games that showed each offence at full stretch. Sunday’s conditions in Calgary, a daytime high of 12 degrees falling toward a low of 4 with light winds, should let both attacks play their full game. This also marks the final professional Canadian football game on the traditional 150 yard field, a closing chapter for the dimensions that have defined the sport for more than a century.
What Decides The 113th Grey Cup
Three things will settle Sunday night. First, whether Edmonton’s defence can hold Alexander below his season rhythm without giving up the deep ball to Philpot and the Montreal receiving corps. Second, whether Fajardo and the Elks can sustain drives long enough to keep that offence watching from the sideline. Third, the kicking and field position game on a November night in Calgary, where Grey Cups so often turn on one return, one miss, or one late drive.
Montreal have been the league’s best team all season, and Edmonton have been its best story. The Grey Cup has a long habit of rewarding the team that plays its cleanest two hours of the year. By Sunday night at McMahon Stadium, one of these franchises adds a chapter to the oldest rivalry in this game’s history, and the 2026 CFL season gets the finish its two best records deserve.
References
CFL playoff guide, 113th Grey Cup page, November 2026. The Score 113th Grey Cup primer, November 14, 2026. Rod Pedersen Show Grey Cup preview, November 2026.
